


shadows of the veil

by price_of_sal



Series: All That Ever Was [2]
Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: 1987, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Personal Growth, Smut, The Female Gaze, The female gays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 16:35:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30125712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/price_of_sal/pseuds/price_of_sal
Summary: '“Two goddamn heroes,” Rebecca grumbles, muscling them both aside. “You plan to fight whatever’s down there with your collective three arms and legs? I’ll lead.” She takes a deep breath and starts down into the darkness with a determined glare. This is the part in the movie, Dani thinks, where they all die.'-Part 2 of whiskey, fire, and all that ever was-The Bly Manor Ghostbusting Buffy-flavored mashup is back! Hannah goes missing, and what will our intrepid heroes find? It's my creation...so probably a lot of self-reflection, ghosts, and sex. Something definitely gets blown up, and there's a cute cat. Enjoy.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Series: All That Ever Was [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2218518
Comments: 11
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

Jamie mentions she lives on the second floor, a tiny loft above a London pub, partly as an implied destination, and partly to explain why Rebecca had been harassing her for the past day.

"Move in to my flat. It's got a lift, I have a second bedroom."

Jamie waves her off. "It'll be fine. We'll be alright."

Rebecca sits back as it dawns on her. “Oh I get it, I see. I’ve been replaced. No longer the apple of this one’s eye.”

Jamie shrugs, picking at the last of the peeling skin on her palms. “You really never were that good in bed. Cooking’s not up to par. What was I supposed to do, keep you on as a charity case forever?”

Rebecca shakes her head at Dani with a look of disgust. “The balls on this one.”

Dani laughs; she does little else whenever these two are in a room together. Jamie is back in her own clothes again, hopping around in a boot cast and causing the nurses trouble at every turn. Rebecca’s always there to get her out of it, or as the mood may strike her, deepen the mischief. She looks up beseechingly at the old nurse who comes in to take Dani’s blood pressure.

“Can’t you anesthetize the curly one? I know you’ve got elixirs in those pockets for mouthy Scrubbers.”

The nurse purses her lips. “Crossed my mind, believe me.”

Jamie catches Dani’s eye and gives her wink. Rebecca sighs. “Alright, I’m off. See you.”

The nurse smiles as she strides from the room. “Sooner than later. The doctor is releasing you tomorrow, Ms. Clayton.”

“Fancy that. Freedom for you at last!”

Dani waits until Rebecca closes the door behind her. She has managed to avoid the subject completely, managed even to accept Jamie staying by her side every minute of the eight visiting hours a day without protest, but she can’t let this go without offering her an out. Jamie’s done enough. Isn’t she sick of Dani already? They barely know each other.

“I don’t have to stay with you. It’s so nice of you to offer, really, but…” Her face heats under Jamie’s cocked eyebrow.

“You’re kidding.”

“I really don’t want to impose. It’s your space, your home. London is huge, I’ll figure something out, I…”

Dani winces, remembering she is, in fact, homeless without even a scrap of clothing that isn’t a hospital gown. She probably should have planned this argument better.

Jamie crosses her arms. “You’ll what, scrabble up a refrigerator box and settle in an alley somewhere? Not up for discussion, Poppins. You’re coming with me.”

Dani has to admit, she likes the idea of Jamie forcing her to do just about anything. “Ok, I just thought maybe it wasn’t worth the U-Haul jokes you’re going to endure from Rebecca.”

Jamie frowns. “What’s a U-Haul?”

\--

The doctor releases her, using words like _extremely lucky_ and _miraculous_ and Dani nods along and doesn’t take her eyes off the one who truly understands second chances, whose crooked smile makes her feel like the word _miracle_ just doesn’t quite cut it.

Hannah arrives in a sleek black car and a chartreuse business suit, whisks Dani through the hospital in a wheelchair as proud and straight-backed as if she was escorting royalty. The sliding doors part to a rush of damp morning breeze: a revelation after a week in sterile confinement. Dani tears up, can’t help it when Jamie and Hannah both support her to step into the car. More than her injury and recovering blood supply, it’s the firm grip of two people, now unspeakably precious to her, the scent of sidewalk puddles, and sweet gratitude for her own heart that kept beating long enough to experience it all.

Jamie holds her hand in the back of the car, whispers a joke that cuts the tears with laughter. Hannah’s warm eyes appear in the rearview mirror at traffic lights. The tide of questions rises again. Dani imagines the long afternoons she will spend with this captivating friend, trying to understand all she saw in the sunrise over Bly.

She leans in to Jamie’s shoulder. _How_ can wait, even more so its distant echo _why_. Nothing matters more than the ease with which Jamie wraps an arm around her, sets her chin on the crown of Dani’s head.

The city drifts by, opulent neighborhoods fading into middle class, buildings gradually more shabby until they skirt the line between working-class and poverty. They stop in front of a dilapidated pub, Hannah glancing uneasily at the rickety stairs and asking for the third time if they can handle the climb on their own. Dani assures her again, and she drives away after pressing in with a brief and careful hug.

Not even a quarter of the way up she has to rest, heart thundering and lungs heaving. Yeah, a ground floor would have been easier. There’s no sign of Jamie regretting it for her own sake as she hops up the wooden steps like a clumsy pirate.

She throws a concerned glace over her shoulder. “Alright, Poppins?”

Dani places each foot gingerly, huffing like a tourist on the slopes of Everest. “I’m. Good. Great.” She wonders what spying neighbors might think, her in a pair of green scrubs and a sling following a cursing, one-legged Jamie. What they might also think if they knew this apartment had only one bed.

They finally reach the threshold. Jamie pads her pocket, wilts with a look of devastation. “I’ve forgotten the keys.”

Dani’s jaw is just dropping open when that cocky smirk returns. She elbows Dani, pulls the keyring out with a jangle and turns the lock.

“You’re…the worst.”

“You said you liked being tormented.”

The door swings open. Dani’s not sure what she expected – some meager bachelor pad or ascetic studio, but she’s infinitely grateful to be wrong.

The warmth of wood is everywhere: pine wainscotting, worn-in floors and raw beams. Plants perched at every window lend splashes of verdant life. The walls are painted lavender, soft as a sigh. It’s cluttered only in the lived-in eccentricity of Jamie’s world: towers of books teeter in the corners, cover shelves, titles listing everything from ancient mythologies to modern embalming, recipe books for Special Sauce, stacks of hefty tomes sporting titles like _Notorious Nuisance: A Complete Guide to Yellow-Class Operations_. It’s the wonderous belly of a morbid librarian’s ship.

Jamie rubs the back of her neck, looking for the first time a little apprehensive. “Sorry, I know it’s not much.”

Dani pushes her lightly. “It’s beautiful.”

Jamie shrugs. “It’s just…you’re American. Big cars, big houses…”

“Big Gulps, Big Macs…”

Jamie smirks. “Sounds like you really miss it.”

“Couldn’t stick around. Iowa girls don’t cut down monsters and have sexy accents.”

Jamie tilts her head. “Guess I found the only one that does.” Suddenly her eyes flit past, brightening as she sets her crutches aside. “Hey baby girl, sweet darling!”

A tabby cat trots out from the kitchen, mewing happily. She slides down to the floor to give her a proper greeting, cooing in a timbre that Dani finds painfully adorable.

“All that convincing me to stay, and you didn’t mention a kitty was part of the bargain?”

“This is Jolene,” Jamie says, “Queen of Hearts.”

Jolene, to Dani’s delight, isn’t picky about where affections come from. She hops into Dani’s lap and accepts all manner of cheek scratches, a tiny engine purring with content.

A soft smile graces Jamie’s lips. “She likes you.”

Dani smooths her ears flat and chuckles when Jolene flops over and bats at her hands with a soft paw. “Afraid she’ll steal me away?”

“Wouldn’t even hold it against you. Who could say no to a face like that?”

Once Jolene seems satisfied for the time being, Jamie struggles upright again.

“Come on. There’s something here for you.”

She leads Dani to a strangely unadorned bedroom. No pictures on the wall or books scatted about, just a neatly made bed and nightstand among the blank walls. Dani bites her lip, reasoning they don’t need much else. “I like where this is going.”

A large paper bag waits on the mattress. Jamie nods. “Open it.”

Dani blinks. It takes another motion from Jamie before she sits warily. She pops the staples and reaches inside. One by one, she pulls them out: a denim jacket, shirts, scarves, new jeans – all the pastels and light tones Dani favors, but closer cut, stylish, confident. Things she might have chosen in a freer life. She shakes her head, voice thick.

“I don’t…how did you…”

“If she weren’t the best Inspector in the country, Rebecca could’ve had a career in fashion. She took down your sizes while you were…” Jamie clears her throat and shakes something off. “While you were sleeping. Questioned me endlessly about your taste.” Jamie winces. “I hope I…got it right?”

Dani nods vigorously and lets out an emotional breath. Underneath the stack of clothing is a small card:

_Dani, use the last parcel at your discretion. Hope it ties Taylor in a knot._

_Come by for dinner soon. You’re one of us now._

_< 3 Rebecca_

She breaks the tape on a small box and peeks inside. Black lace gleams from within. She gives a sly smile at Jamie’s curiosity. “Oh, just something between us girls.”

“There’s one more thing.”

Dani lifts the heavy shape from the bottom of the bag with a gasp. The leather jacket, smelling of smoke, sewn so carefully it’s difficult to tell where her arm was almost severed at the shoulder.

Jamie narrows her eyes. “Still mine, don’t get any ideas. But…” her gaze drags over Dani’s body, heavy and slow, “suppose I can let you wear it sometimes.”

Dani’s lips part as she returns the look. A week of stolen kisses and reserved touches has her throbbing down to her toes. “Maybe you can help me get out of this, first.”

Jamie sits next to her on the bed and lets the crutches slide to the floor. Her hands stay firmly at her sides. “I’m afraid to hurt you.”

“I’d like it if you did.”

Jamie levels her gaze. “Poppins, you barely made it up the stairs.”

Dani lets out a stubborn huff. “Why are you being so reasonable?”

Jamie chuckles. “If you could only see the things going through my mind.” She takes Dani’s hand, runs her fingers along the creases still caked with fragments of dried blood. “Let me take care of you tonight.”

Dani twitches. A hundred conditioned reflexes implore her to politely refuse, deny the dull ache of her entire body, insist she’s not harboring a nagging fear that at any moment a faceless horror will burst through the door. Beneath those more pressing, obvious anxieties is a much older one. Caretaking in Dani’s life has ever only flowed in one direction, and the thought of being its recipient seems impossibly indulgent. She opens her mouth to offer the Midwestern currency of waspy white lies, _I’m fine_ or _really, you’ve done enough_.

But Jamie hand glides up, pressing a shushing finger to her lips. “That,” Jamie says as Dani’s heartrate skyrockets at the feel of her touch, “was a statement, not a request.”

It could be sad, that someone who’s known her a week can read her better than anyone she can name with a lifetime of practice. It would be tragic if it weren’t such a goddamn relief.

“You wait here.” Jamie hops up and out of the room.

Music drifts in, a sultry voice and tinny piano on crackling vinyl, then the sound of a running faucet. Dani folds her new clothes carefully, no less happy than if she’d won the lottery. Jamie returns and frowns at her scrubs.

“Tricky issue, that shirt.”

Dani tilts her head to the side. “I thought you weren’t going to get me naked.”

“I said no such thing.” Jamie kneels, pulling off Dani’s shoes and untying the drawstring of her pants. She tugs them off gently, shaking her head when she catches Dani’s eye. “Putting my self control through the ringer, you looking at me like that.”

“Sorry,” Dani exhales, in what is probably the most unconvincing tone of her life. “This doesn’t feel platonic, exactly...”

Heat radiates from Jamie’s body as she leans near, unclipping the sling with exacting delicacy. “Maybe not,” she brushes her lips along Dani’s ear when she pulls away. “Maybe I just like making you squirm.”

“You’re good at it,” Dani murmurs, eyelids fluttering. Jamie’s palm runs up her back, sending a wave of goosebumps along her spine. She tugs the hem of the shirt up delicately, freezing when Dani flinches involuntarily at a warning twinge of pain from her shoulder.

“Fuck this thing,” Jamie growls, grabbing the thin material at the seam. She pulls hard, ripping the fabric until Dani’s bare chest is exposed to the cool air.

“I think this is the part in the romance novel when you throw me down and ravish me,” Dani giggles. Jamie slips the fabric away, biting her lip. Dani cocks an eyebrow. “Sure you’re not going to change your mind?”

“I am…” Jamie leans forward, “the perfect gentleman.” Her lips brush Dani’s lightly before pressing in for a lingering kiss, teeth grazing just enough to make the laws of gravity temporarily unreliable.

She could be disappointed when Jamie stands and leads her to the bath, but the relief of slipping into the hot water gives even sex a run for its money. Dani lets out a stuttering groan as she settles in the tub. All the aching pieces of her soften under the calming sway of the water.

Jamie plucks up a washcloth and soap, humming quietly to the music. The lather smells of eucalyptus. Dani reaches for the rag but Jamie breezes past her, sudsing her back with gentle strokes.

“You don’t have to do that,” she says, voice small.

Jamie’s sea green eyes flick to hers. “Not used to having anyone care for you?”

Dani swallows, watching the water turn pink with dissolved blood. “Not like this.”

The music is soothing, melancholy as the memory of winter rain. A week ago she was someone else. A week ago she was alone as she would ever be. Lingering parts of her old self still caution against relaxing her guard. Nothing is guaranteed, they whisper. Yet the thought nestles in quietly in among other truths, uncertainty no longer frightening. Instead, what would have passed unnoticed becomes precious to her: the drip of water from Jamie’s elbow, the curls of steam rising all around. Every moment dies, she thinks, but the ones you don’t notice never live at all.

Jamie dips the cloth into the water, rinses the soap away with slow and careful wrings: a strange baptism. To live would have been enough. But Dani’s here, with _her_ , closing her eyes to the gentle trickles of water that run down her back. Her hand drifts out of the tub and rests on Jamie’s leg.

“So…” she sighs. “What’s your favorite color?”

Jamie laughs. “Blimey, coming at me with the hard questions.”

Dani hums. “I think we could use some ordinary conversation around here.”

Jamie side-eyes her as she submerges the rag. “Green. And yours?”

“Orange.”

“Orange?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong with orange?”

Jamie shakes her head. “Nothing, just pegged you for team purple.”

Dani smacks the back of her hand against Jamie’s leg. “Why do I feel stereotyped right now?”

“That sweater! Your…aura…”

Dani giggles. “Fine. Your turn.”

“Mundane question?”

“Whatever you want.”

Jamie ponders for moment. “Desert island snack?”

“Peanut-butter pretzels.”

“God, you really are American.”

“What’s yours?” Dani scowls and squeezes out a truly horrific impression of Jamie’s accent. “Biscuits and jammy dodgers?

Jamie looks like she might be changing her mind about letting Dani stay. “Poppins…jammy dodgers _are_ biscuits.”

“False. They are cookies.”

“Going to be like the War of Independence every day with you, isn’t it?”

“We know who won in the end.”

“Am I sensing patriotism from the ex-pat?”

Dani rolls her eyes. “Trust me, no.” She purses her lips. “What’s your favorite place to vacation? Assuming you take time off from rescuing damsels in distress.”

“Anywhere warm, unpopulated, and private.” Jamie seems satisfied with Dani’s cleanliness and sets the cloth aside, drying her hands. “Sort of difficult qualities to come by in the isles.”

“You’ve never left the UK?”

Jamie gives a distant smile. “Once, when I…eh, graduated. Went trekking through Greece. Athens, Crete, little bit of Turkey.”

Dani’s eyes widen. “Alone?”

Jamie nods. “Best way to do it.”

“Wow. I mean…I’ve just never had the guts to do something like that.”

Jamie chuckles. “Have you forgotten the bit where you moved to a foreign country all on your own?”

Dani shakes her head. “Yeah…that wasn’t courage.”

“Hate to burst your bubble, Poppins, but bravery was involved.” Jamie rubs at the iodine around Dani’s bandage with a finger. “Any decision made in the name of survival is a brave one.”

Some truths will take a while to come around to. Dani goes for the diversion. “First album you ever bought?”

“Ziggy Stardust. Except…” Jamie clears her throat. “I stole it.”

Dani’s eyes widen. “Oh my God.”

Jamie straightens, spooked. “I can explain, I...”

Dani grabs her shoulder. “Please, please, tell me there are pictures of little glam rock Jamie out there somewhere.”

She laughs. “Buried in a vault. Threw away the key.”

“So…you’re saying they exist?”

Jamie gives her that not-up-for-discussion glower. “You?”

Dani gives a heavy sigh. She should have thought about the personal consequences of the question before asking it. “ABBA.”

Jamie’s face goes through a gymnastic set of suppressed mirth. “Ahem, that’s um, very…”

Dani narrows her eyes. “If you tell anyone, I’ll find those pictures of you and put them on every billboard in London.”

“It’s a bit sexy when you threaten me.”

“Oh? I’ll keep that in mind.”

Jamie’s expression wavers, something raw flickering beneath her smile. A brief glance away and it’s gone.

Dani frowns. “What’s up?”

Jamie shakes her head. “Nothing, I’m good.” Dani takes her hand, pressing gently. Jamie’s eyes meet hers with a look of reluctance and helplessness, as if something about Dani squeezes things from her that would otherwise stay hidden.

“In the helicopter…when you died. I dunno.” She shakes her head. “All I could think was that I should have asked you more questions, that I hardly knew a thing about you and here I was, going to wander around the rest of my life feeling like an unfinished sentence.”

Dani stares at her a long moment, mouth open, trying to think of some response that can do justice to what’s happening in her chest. Finally she stands from the water, wraps a towel around herself, and sits next to her on the floor. 

Jamie looks up at the ceiling with a wince. “Sorry,” she sniffs. “Dunno where all that came from.”

Dani turns her head toward her again with a light touch, traces her eyebrow, cheek, runs her finger along supple lips.

“God, you are so beautiful.”

Dani knows by Jamie’s momentary stillness that no one’s ever said that to her, not like this. She slips past her touch and closes the distance between them. The kiss is chaste in the beginning, just the warmth of it, until Dani lets out a little noise of want that parts Jamie’s lips and turns the emotional embrace of it into something a bit more carnal.

Dani lets the towel fall, tangling her good hand in Jamie’s hair. “I made a promise to be a perfect gentleman,” she breathes.

Dani takes her hand and plants it firmly on her breast, teeth grazing her lower lip. “Break it.”

She doesn’t have to ask twice. Dani ends up on her back, Jamie gripping the inside of her thigh, now wet with more than steam. Her mouth moves down her neck, chest, spending enough time in each place to make Dani groan and twist with an addicting agony.

The warmth of Jamie’s mouth starts light, just the slow grind of her lips, the pressure of leaning in. The sensation still gets a gasp from Dani. Her hands squeeze tighter, tongue making slow circles that set the room spinning. It’s good, too good, everything she could have imagined. That is, in fact, a problem: she doesn’t want this over quickly. Dani reaches down, lifting Jamie’s chin to look at her. If she had two hands, she could guide her. Instead, she just has to say it:

“Can you… I need you inside.”

Jamie never takes her eyes from hers. Dani gasps sharply at the sensation of Jamie filling her suddenly, testing her depth and watching her every move. It takes courage not to look away or close her eyes.

Jamie quickens the pace, curls her fingers up in a way that gets an _oh fuck_ whine from Dani, watching her every twitch, relishing her every sound, the way her breasts move with the rocking pace. It’s more vulnerable to be watched than anything else she’s encountered: exposing, intimate, and undeniably hot.

Jamie moves her fingers to the outside, tracing the same circles. Dani holds on so tight that her back raises off the floor. She doesn’t break the eye contact, so lost in it she thinks she’ll be swallowed whole by Jamie’s emerald gaze.

And she is. The break silences her mid-scream, finally squeezing her eyes shut in an electric wave. She opens them for the last shivering moan of it, letting Jamie have that, too.

Jamie pants, awestruck as if she’d been handed something holy.

Dani grins, stroking her cheek. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Jamie whispers back, smile blooming.

\--

This is how the days pass in the slow unfurling of a new world:

She wakes at 7am (stuck forever, it seems, on a school schedule), drowsily focusing on the details of an unfamiliar ceiling. This is the moment she cherishes above all others, when she feels the warmth next to her and remembers its source, not the snoring lump of Eddie or an errant shaft of sunlight on an otherwise empty bed, but _her_ , always awake and watching in guarded reverence, achingly beautiful in the grey light of morning.

Dani’s first order of business is to climb over the wall Jamie rebuilds each night; to reach across the sheets and smooth out the crease in her brow, to kiss her with that burning, bowed look of want that makes Jamie hum against her lips, fearful expectation melting into tangled limbs that keep them in bed long after waking.

Jamie drags her to the bathroom despite her protests that she can do it herself. “I am,” she informs Dani, “training to be a proper nurse.” She wets the edge of the bandages down, peeling so carefully that it takes ten minutes to loosen six inches of tape.

It hurts. God, it fucking hurts. Pain searing enough to make Dani suck air through her teeth and give mad little cackles when the bandage finally comes free. Jamie dulls it with her effortless flirts, jokes, little stories to keep her wanting: ghost hunting foibles and Rebecca’s disastrous taste in men, until Dani’s too busy laughing to realize the new dressing is already in place.

They make breakfast, trading skills: Jamie brews tea, Dani flips pancakes. The newness of it never strays into awkwardness, as if they’re two strangers who’ve learned steps to the same dance. Jamie does the dishes, mumbling about the absurdity of scrubbing one-handed. Dani watches, eyebrow cocked, cataloguing the ways she will repay her later.

And there is plenty of repayment. On the couch, against the counter, hot and wet and frantic despite the sling and the cast. Dani collects more orgasms in a few days than she’s had in the past decade, and thanking God she still has the use of her right hand, learns more than one way to make Jamie gasp her name. Each time she thinks, it can’t get better, and each time it does. The memory of the hot slick feel of Jamie on her fingertips, _the taste of her_ , the bruises she leaves behind collectively turn Dani into an insatiable beast. It’s a miracle they have time to make breakfast at all.

Jamie falls asleep in her chair each afternoon when the light paints the room in golden hues, a book on her chest and Jolene curled in her lap. It takes Dani a few days to make the connection between early mornings and this ritual naptime: Jamie doesn’t sleep well at night.

She wants to tell her things, Dani knows: when they lie entwined and sweaty, catching their breath, when she touches Jamie’s elbow lightly after she stares out the window with a particular blank look. Small moments that would be easy to miss in the real world, habitually obscured by Jamie’s cocky smirk, her quick wit and easy charm. But Dani’s here: in her home, where secrets permeate the walls just as they did at Bly. She hungers to know. Jamie’s barriers are smooth and airtight as the skin of a submarine. Even if there were a gap there, somewhere edge for purchase to peek or pry, she wouldn’t dream of it. So Dani waits.

\--

On a languid, sex-smelling Saturday they leave the hazy cocoon of Jamie’s apartment and walk to a grocery shop. Dani waves away Jamie’s concern when she still needs to catch her breath every few blocks; the fresh air is soothing. Rainless clouds move swiftly across a leaden sky, dappling the street in soft, ever-changing topographies of light.

Something else goes unsaid between them: the terror of the past week that comes roaring back when left alone. One night Jamie had gone for smokes, only ten minutes, and returned to find Dani hugging her knees on the couch, eyes closed and shivering. Jamie had wrapped her in a tight embrace without a word, and not left again.

One of those lithe, strong arms holds the door open. “After you.”

Dani resists the urge to grab her by the belt and pin her to the threshold with a kiss. She walks in and holds the door in turn for Jamie, and this tiny act of equality fills her with an absurd amount of glee.

Jamie’s nimble on the crutches, bounding ahead with speed. She makes Dani laugh with a casual spin mid-isle. “Might not have to wait until the cast comes off to start Scrubbin’ again.”

“Are you gonna shell out for the silver-plated edition crutches?”

“Think they’ll put my initials on ‘em, if I pay extra?”

“In green rhinestones.”

Jamie flashes her million-dollar grin and swings to the freezer for ice cream.

They’re in the checkout line when a rough voice call out. “Taylor.”

Jamie wheels around, stunned. “O’Connor.” They clasp forearms roughly. The woman is big as a tree, with crow’s feet and a shock of short red hair, the type of person that could carry the both of them a fair distance without breaking a sweat.

“On the Out.”

“I see that. How long?”

“Whole year.” The music of her Gaelic accent contrasts with the tattoos covering every inch of her scarred arms. “Could you believe it? Me, stayin’ out of trouble.” She looks down at Jamie’s cast. “Can’t say the same for you.”

Jamie smiles. “Work-related.”

“Always is.” The woman looks past her with a twinkle in her eye and extends an arm. “Who’s the pretty lass?”

Dani blushes. Her hand feels like a child’s in the woman’s enormous bear paw. “Dani.”

“Pleased, Dani. Dolores.” She smiles fondly at Jamie, and slaps her back in a sudden hug. “Good to see you Taylor. I’m off the sauce, but let’s grab a bite sometime.”

Jamie watches her go with a strange expression. “You ok?” Dani says, bumping into her shoulder softly.

Jamie’s eyes dart between hers and the ground. “Course. Let’s go.”

Back inside, Jamie sets the groceries down and leans against the counter. She drums her fingers along the metal edge, nostrils flaring.

Dani rubs at her numb fingers inside the sling, a new nervous habit. “Did I do something wrong?”

Jamie lets out an harsh breath. “No, no. ‘S not you at all. I…”

Dani watches her carefully, waiting for the chips to fall.

“I was in prison, for a time.”

“Ok.”

“I should have told you. Before you came here, so you could decide fairly. ”

“Jamie...”

“You’ve got a right to know what I’ve – ”

“Jamie.”

“And I understand if you want to – ”

“Did you kill anyone?”

Jamie shifts. “Eh, no.”

“Did you rape anyone?”

Her eyes widen. “No!”

Dani steps forward and brushes a curl from her face. “Ok, then. Let’s make lunch, I’m starving.” She turns and rifles through the bag, setting out sandwich fixings.

Jamie’s arms drop to her sides. “Do you…want me to explain?”

“Only if you need to, for your own sake.”

After a moment, she shakes her head as if warding off voices. “You sure? Y-”

“I’m not here,” Dani interrupts quietly, “with any expectations about the way life should be. I’m not sure I’d even know how to have any if I tried. And I’m not here out of convenience, or because you saved my life. I’m here because this is exactly where I want to be, with you.”

Jamie takes that in. “Thought you were just sticking around for a good lay.”

Dani lifts an eyebrow and shrugs. “I won’t deny…that’s a huge perk.”

Jamie smiles, face softening at the end. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Understanding. I dunno…” She crosses her arms, chewing on her bottom lip in a way Dani finds unspeakably adorable.

“Now will you stop moping around, expecting me to leave?”

“Not even remotely. I’ve got loads of other skeletons in my closet.”

Dani glances around at the stacks of books on death. “Not literally…right…”

The phone rings and Jamie hops over to answer. Dani hears the distant squawk of Rebecca’s brash tone. “Wha’ you going on about? I’m chaste as a nun.” Jamie covers the receiver and rolls her eyes. “She’s demanding we leave our den of depravity for more than bon-bons and smokes.”

“Don’t forget, Owen was supposed to come by tonight.”

Jamie tells Rebecca and looks up again. “She says invite him ‘round. If he’s your friend we’ll all like him.”

\--

When they arrive outside of Rebecca’s place, Dani sees why Jamie fought tooth and nail against the idea of staying here: it is to Jamie’s apartment what a Lamborghini is to a farm truck, all sleek relfective glass and modern angles. Even the sidewalk sparkles in the evening light. Jamie motions to the side of the door and lights a cigarette. Dani takes a deep breath and walks in a circle, a storm brewing in her chest.

“Why you nervous? Rebecca won’t bite.”

“It’s not her I’m anxious about. Hannah, actually.”

Jamie smiles knowingly. “Force of nature, isn’t she? Listen, I used to be skittish around her, too.”

“Yeah, right.” Dani finds it hard to imagine a woman who once fought a monster with a machete as being intimidated by anything with a heartbeat.

Jamie raises her eyebrows. “She’s retired Black Badge. Special forces of the MPA. Imbedded all over the world, monitoring apparition activity, manipulation, bloody dark shit.”

“Please don’t tell me people try to make hauntings happen on purpose.”

“Of course. These are humans we’re talking about here,” Jamie says. “Men will make a weapon out of anything.”

Dani looks out as a flock of pigeons scatter for a pedestrian. After the events of the past week, the existence of a paranormal shadow war doesn’t seem so absurd. She thinks suddenly of Henry Wingrave, the dark circles under his lightless blue eyes.

Jamie stubs out the cherry on her bootheel, frowning as if in deep thought. She’s smoking less; Dani figured it was a side-effect of their forced convalescence, but there seems another curious motive at work here, when she has the opportunity and instead quits after half a cigarette.

“Dani!” She turns to see Owen jogging toward them with a covered baking tray and bottle of wine. He gasps and stops short of the intended embrace. “Your arm! Heavens, are you alright?”

Dani pulls him tight to her good side, the clean scent of his aftershave transporting her to warm mornings spent in Bly’s kitchen. “It’s been a long few weeks.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. Trouble at home.” Owen takes in Jamie’s crutches, the healing scrape above her eyebrow. “Are you the one I’m to thank for saving my friend?”

Jamie offers him a hand and a smile. “Jamie Taylor.”

Owen flies past and nearly lifts her off the ground in a squeeze that makes Jamie emit a strangled exhale. “Y’ welcome, mate,” she squeaks, patting his back.

They take the lift to a thickly carpeted third floor hallway. Before Jamie can land a second knock the door flies open. Rebecca peers disapprovingly down at Jamie, hand on hip, in a crop top and jeans that manage to be both casual and meticulously perfect. “You’re late.”

Jamie guffaws. “You didn’t even specify a time!”

“ _You_ said an hour. It’s been two.” She purses her lips and inspects them head to toe. Dani stifles a groan, knowing Rebecca will not miss the darkening hickey that peeks from the top of her blouse. “You,” Rebecca says with a lifted brow. “Look fucking gorgeous.”

“I had help. Best personal shopper in all of London.”

Rebecca grins and tilts her head at Owen. “Come on, Hannah’s making carbonara. We can do introductions in the kitchen.” Her apartment is contemporary, impeccably tasteful, designed with the sleek mindfulness of a high-power attorney.

Hannah turns from the stove as they enter, more radiant in a yellow dress than the finest summer day. Dani freezes, heart hammering. Rebecca and Jamie part and stand aside, hands folded and smiling in such a way that Dani realizes with a little thrill of betrayal that their entrance had been planned in advance.

Hannah’s eyes sparkle as she approaches, graceful arms extending out. Her warm, smooth hands clasp gently around Dani’s free hand. “There is a culture you’re a part of now,” she says. “It would mean very much to me to give you the traditional greeting.”

It’s not me, Dani wants to say. I’m not special. Forget it.

But even old panicky habits are no match for Hannah’s earthen gaze. This person saved her life, Jamie’s life, and what meaning lights her eyes is much bigger than Dani herself. She smiles, throat tight, and nods. Hannah takes a step back and sinks down to one knee.

Small sounds from behind turn her head. Rebecca helps Jamie to the floor and then kneels herself, head bowed. Owen hides in the corner, clutching his baking tray like someone who just intruded on a church service.

Hannah gazes up at her, voice smooth with words long-memorized. “Seek nothing, and all will be illuminated. We are empty and united in the light and the dark. All that is, never was, and will never be again.” Hannah’s face breaks into a brilliant smile. “Welcome home, Dani.”

She stands and chuckles at her baffled expression before wrapping her in a hug. Dani lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, overwhelmed by a mix of confusion and humility.

“Thank you, Hannah,” she whispers.

Rebecca tsks at Jamie. “You didn’t prepare her a bit, did you?”

Jamie flashes her crooked grin, wobbling to her feet. “And ruin the surprise?”

Dani moves the conversation, cheeks burning. “Owen Sharma, this is Rebecca Jessel, and Mrs. Hannah Grose.”

Rebecca shakes his hand. “Pleased, Owen. I’m sure you were told this would be an ordinary dinner party. Shall I get the door for you, so you can run screaming?”

“I do feel deceived. Dani and Jamie seemed like a _pair ‘a normal_ people to me.” Jamie lets out a low restrained groan. “Mrs. Grose, that carbonara smells divine.”

She offers him a delicate hand, blinking rapidly. “It’s Ms. Grose, actually. For a while now. But call me Hannah.” Jamie and Rebecca exchange a side-eyed glance. Hannah releases his hand and there’s the palpable vibration of a spell being broken. “I apologize, Owen. There’s one more modicum of business to attend to. Rebecca?”

Rebecca crosses her arms. “I dunno, does she really deserve it?”

Hannah’s voice firms. “Rebecca Jessel.”

“Oh, alright.” Rebecca produces an envelope and holds it out, beaming.

Jamie’s face drops. She takes the packet, stares at the wax seal a long moment before breaking it carefully. Dani moves instinctively near, hand on her back as she reads the enclosed letter. “What is it?”

“Read it to us, Taylor.”

Jamie licks her lips and begins haltingly:

“T-To Jamie M. Taylor, licensed Scrubber 5th District: regarding your actions January 14th, on the Isle of Bly during the Ministry-confirmed White Class Event 1987-003:

“Based on the report provided by Operator Grose and several eye-witnesses, the Ministry of Paranormal Affairs has determined that your actions directly resulted in preservation of innocent life despite significant risk to yourself, and represent the highest standard of excellence in the field. You have been awarded Special Commendation of Valor. After – ” Jamie’s voice breaks. Dani rubs her back until she continues.

“After review of your otherwise excellent operations history, the licensure body have approved a motion made by OP Grose to strike from your record the hold associated with prohibited extra-operational White-Class Event 1984-024. Having previously met the requirements, you are hereby promoted to the level of Paranormal Investigator.”

Jamie covers her face in her hands as Rebecca lets out a whoop. “Cheers, mate! I better be your plus-one to tea with the Queen. No offense, Dani.”

Even Owen pats her on the back. “No idea what just happened, but congratulations.”

Jamie laughs. “It’s a very good thing you brought wine.” Hannah mumbles something in her ear and gives her arm a squeeze before turning back to the stove.

While everyone’s attention is diverted to pouring drinks, Dani leans in for a swift kiss and a whisper. “Congratulations, Inspector.”

Jamie lets out a breath. “It’s a lot, isn’t it? All this.”

“Not more than you deserve.”

“Nor you.”

Dani shakes her head. “I just saw things, I didn’t spear a monster in the face to save some clueless American.”

Jamie shakes her head in wonder. “You have no idea how special you are.”

Dani’s eyes run over Jamie, dressed up in a collared shirt that brings out the sea-green of her eyes. “Maybe if you keep telling me like that…”

Rebecca sweeps in with a pair of overfilled wine glasses. “Excuse me,” she whispers urgently. “You two need to stop whatever cute shit you’re doing and pay attention to the cute shit behind you.”

Dani glances over to see Owen talking animatedly to Hannah about various methods for tossing beaten eggs into pasta. Hannah is propped casually against the counter, and – Dani has to blink twice to believe it – blushing. “Looks like they’re getting along,” she says, taking a swig from the wine glass.

Jamie gives her a serious look. “You don’t understand, Hannah doesn’t…well, she isn’t…”

“I’ve been trying to get her laid for the past six years,” Rebecca hisses. “And _you_ just walk in here in with this charming specimen and turn her into a puddle with eyes.”

Dani gives an apologetic smile. “Sorry?”

Rebecca folds her arms with an appalled scoff. “Next time, bring one for me. You’ve made me into a bloody fifth wheel.”

\--

Owen leaves early to catch the ferry on time, but not before assuring Hannah that her carbonara was the best he’d ever tasted. Dani hugs him at the door, buzzing with the satisfaction of having her old friend seamlessly blend with the new.

“I’m so relieved you’re alright,” Owen says. “What will you do now?”

Dani frowns. “I haven’t really gotten that far. Just gonna take some time to think, I guess.”

“Well whatever you do, don’t come back to Bly.”

Dani laughs. “Yeah, I wasn’t intending to.”

“It’s just a soggy ol’ rock without you there.” Owen sighs, looking suddenly tired. “And, eh…Mum isn’t doing well. I was sort of planning to return to London with her. My sister lives in the city, she’s got a house and…I need the help.”

Dani touches his arm. “Oh, Owen. I’m sorry. But, on a selfish note, I’d love to have you near.”

“I think you deserve a bit of selfishness after all that’s happened.” He throws a glance toward Jamie and wiggles his eyebrows. “Good to see you smiling so much.”

“You, too,” Dani says cryptically. Owen’s eyes twinkle as he shuts the door behind him.

“Now,” Hannah sighs, eyes lingering for a moment on the door. “Something I couldn’t bring up in front of our guest.” She lifts her briefcase to the table, where the four of them settle in chairs. “Henry Wingrave has been detained.”

“Took ‘em long enough,” Jamie grumbles.

“I’m afraid Rebecca’s instincts were correct.” Hannah spreads photocopies across the table. Dani plucks a black-and-white photo from the pile of a bright-eyed young man. “That’s him,” Hannah says, “seventeen years ago. Back when he was familiar to our side.” Hannah reads Dani’s uncomprehending look. “That’s an ID photo, from an Inspector’s License.”

“No fucking way,” Rebecca says under her breath.

“Mm. Apparently Wingrave had quite the career as a paranormal exterminator. Even tried for admission to the Rectory.”

Jamie bumps Dani’s elbow. “Scrubbers and Inspectors can be trained by Operators, but Operators have to be trained by Seekers. The Rectory for Europe is in Norway.”

Dani sets down the picture, disturbed by the contrast with the hollow man who hired her months ago. “Why didn’t he get in?”

“Ordinarily, we might not have the answer to that. Hundreds apply every year, only a handful are chosen as Operators retire or burn out. They understandably don’t keep records of every single application.” Hannah taps the picture. “But Henry _was_ accepted, he was just about to enter his first term when the invite was abruptly rescinded. A complaint was filed.”

“By who?”

“Dominic Wingrave, his brother, alleging infidelity between Henry and his wife.”

“Blimey,” Jamie chuckles. “What a gem.”

“You can get kicked out for cheating?”

“Please understand, Dani, becoming an Operator is highly sensitive.”

Rebecca leans in. “It’s not about the frolic, more about the lies. They’re trusting you with the power to bridge life and death, they want to be sure they could trust you not to bang your own sister-in-law behind everyone’s back.”

“Once the truth came out, there was a swift divorce between Dominic and Charlotte. Less clear was why he hired a team of custody lawyers before fleeing to America with his daughter, Flora. Charlotte had already agreed to grant him full custody.”

Rebecca gives a dark laugh, and Dani gets a bad taste in her mouth. “Henry was the father.”

“Perhaps as the only credit to him, he didn’t fight it. Signed a mountain of documents ensuring he’d never see the child again.”

“What happened to Charlotte?”

Hannah leans back. “Listed as missing some months later. A police report stated that Henry Wingrave told them Charlotte made repeated statements that she planned to move to America to be with Flora. Even had the ticket receipt, purchased in her name. But she never boarded the plane, and was never seen again. Or so we thought.” There is another photo, peeking out from under the papers. Dani tugs it free. A smiling young woman with long dark hair, holding a little girl’s hand.

“Oh my God,” she whispers.

Hannah sighs. “Your Lady of the Lake. The legend was old, but without any merit – the Wingraves had the property vetted by a reputable exterminator before selecting Bly Manor as their summer home. MPA pulled Charlotte’s bones from the lake last night. Hard to determine exact cause of death, but the coroner found a break in her upper neck that’s often called the hangman’s – ”

The table abruptly turns to ice under Dani’s hand. There is a distant scrape of wooden chair legs along a hard floor. “The cellar,” she whispers. She’s back there again, bare feet on the cold stone. The wooden beam casts a moving shadow on the ceiling in the light of a single swinging bulb. Her voice deepens, splits, as if someone speaks quietly in tandem with her words.

“She hung herself. With Flora’s baby blanket. It was summer and she wore his favorite dress. It was summer and she wore his favorite dress.” The images flash in rapid succession, white hot against her eyelids. “She left him the will to the manor on their bedside table. He tore apart the place looking for a note, but she didn’t leave him anything. There was nothing. There was nothing. There was nothing. There was – ”

Jamie’s hand closes around Dani’s and breaks the flurry of whispers tickling up the back of her ear. She flinches and looks up to stunned expressions.

“Dani,” Jamie whispers. “Your eyes…”

“He weighted her body with stones from the garden,” she finishes. “He said words as he did it, in another language.”

Hannah stiffens. “What words?”

Dani reaches, but the whispers have gone. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear them anymore.” She leans away from the table, suddenly exhausted. Jamie puts an arm around her shoulders.

Hannah breaks the long silence. “He couldn’t let her go. He’d have rather had her as a rotten corpse than to let her go. And he knew he could hide it, in the middle of nowhere, under the cover of an already debunked ghost story.”

“Feeding her tortured soul just to keep her near,” Jamie says, not taking her eyes from Dani. “What sort of knowledge does it take to pull something like that off?”

Hannah looks hard at the photo of Henry, mouth set. “Go home and rest. I must make some phone calls. Dani…you will accompany me to MPA in the morning.”

“Of course. I don’t know if I can be of much help…” She trails off at Rebecca’s snorting giggle.

“Poppins,” Jamie interjects carefully. “Just now, when you were talking about the cellar? Your irises went completely black.”

Dani blinks. Rebecca nods with a wince. “Bit creepy, to be honest.”

“What…what does…”

Hannah gives her a reassuring smile. “No light in the Veil.” _No dark_ , Dani thinks automatically. “Get home and rest, dear. We have so many things to discuss, but there’s no need to rush it.”

Rebecca clears her throat and spreads her hands along the table. “Recruiting a Seeker, clandestine communication with MPA…sounds a bit like you’re out of retirement, OP.”

Hannah sighs. “I’ve already submitted your clearances.”

“Shit yes!” Jamie yells, high-fiving Rebecca.

“Temporary!” Hannah stresses over their celebration. “Just until this gets cleared up.”

“Right, right,” Rebecca nods, twinkle in her eye. “Whatever you say, Boss.”

\-- 

The evening fog prickles over Dani’s skin in cool relief. They make their way through the throngs of people headed down stairs into the damp smell of the Underground. Jamie pulls on her coat once they pass through the gates. “How are you feeling?”

Dani shudders not from the cold, but from the ringing in her head. “I just want to be somewhere…anywhere. And not have demon voices speak through me?”

The train roars into the tube, fluttering Jamie’s curls around her face. She checks her watch. “You tired?”

“Not really.”

“It’s early, come on.” Jamie leads her by the hand to board a different line.

The rumble of the train soothes Dani’s fried nerves. Jamie slips an arm around her, unfazed by the second glances of the other passengers. New sensations pass by like flickering lights in the tunnel: a swell of pride, nervousness that fades when Dani sees there’s no one around that might give them any trouble. In a past life this position was just another way of being claimed, her identity flattened under that big heavy arm: _And here is my accessory, Danielle_.

But with Jamie, the gesture becomes something completely different. Not just in its effect on Dani, who is almost embarrassed to be melting into the seat from a casual touch – but in the risk Jamie takes in doing it. Dani is dimly aware that a time will come when she’ll wish public affection didn’t imperil them, but for now she basks in a teenage-level of defiance at the stares they’re getting. She turns and plants a long kiss on Jamie’s cheek.

Jamie grins, amused. “Look at you, puttin’ on a show.”

“You started it.”

“Did I?”

Dani thinks of month ago, when a stranger’s glare would have sent her into a spiral of debilitating anxiety. “Yep. Definitely your fault.”

The train rumbles to a halt, tinny speaker announcing the station in a garbled London accent.

“It’ll be a bit of a walk.”

Dani follows her up and out, disoriented when they emerge on the edge of an ancient industrial neighborhood.

“I’ve never been to this part of the city.”

Jamie grins. “It’s not really on the tourist route. Lived here for a bit, when I got out.”

They pass by graffiti, trash cans overturned in alleyways, the slick black of the street shimmering under iron lampposts. Silhouetted people shelter from the rain in the eaves of abandoned buildings. Dani feels a disquieting shame about the Iowa girl who would have clutched her purse close, head down and hurrying along. They pass by an open window belching steam and the blare of synthesizers, a food vendor that smells of burnt curry and hot spices, four hooded people finding respite from the cold around a barrel fire. One of the men looks over, twitching and talking to himself, the crusted beard and tattered coat of someone with mental illness. Dani smiles and waves. He smiles back.

They emerge suddenly on a dead-end strip, neon signs advertising massage parlors and half-price smokes. “This place,” Jamie says, crutching along, “is frequented by my type. Bit of a dive, hope you don’t mind.”

They stop at a house crammed between two brick buildings in the absurd chaos of hasty modernization. A tarnished brass placard touts:

_Ankou’s Barrow, members only_

Jamie taps the heavy iron knocker. A slat opens to a pair of squinting eyes and a nasally voice. “Members only.” Jamie flashes an ID embossed with a silver crux. The eyes flit over to Dani.

“Aye, where’s hers? We don’t take no groupies, Scubber.”

“That’s Inspector, as of today,” Jamie growls. “And she’s a Black-eye, I wouldn’t be givin’ her any lip.”

The eyes widen and the peep hole slams shut. The door flings opens to a squat man with a gnome’s beard and a flat cap. He drops to one knee with a desperate look.

“So sorry, light and the dark and all that. Haven’t seen you here before, Seeker.”

Jamie chuckles and pulls the man up by his arm. “Quit with the formalities, Derek. She’s not Rectory, and you’re making her blush.”

“Oh, oh!” Derek stutters, getting to his feet. “Pleased to meet you anyhow…?”

“Dani,” she says, shaking his warm hand.

“May I take your jackets?”

Dani takes her token, though by the look of it, Derek will die before he forgets which is hers. She leans into Jamie’s ear. “Is it going to be like this everywhere I go?”

She bumps into her softly. “Don’t worry, no one can tell just by looking. Even if they figure it out, once they know you they’ll stop dropping to the floor to kiss your hand. Seekers are just…” She fades off, shaking her head. “Well, they don’t come around often. People tend to trip over themselves to show respect.” She gives Dani a little smile. “We can go somewhere else, if you like.”

“Don’t have to, as long as _you_ promise to drop to your knees later.”

Jamie’s eyelids flutter. “Won’t be later, you keep talking like that.”

“Just stay close to me.”

Jamie leaves one of her crutches in the coat check. “Wild horses, Poppins. “

They step through the entry into one large room, the bottom floor hollowed out into an ordinary pub with booths, and a ratty pool table. Just another London drinkery, but for the decorations: Dani feels like she’s stepped into a macabre soccer bar. Skulls of every kind sit atop thick crown molding, shadow boxes with artifacts in homage to deities of death, framed news clippings of London haunts fronted by smiling extermination teams. A few people sit huddled by the bar – one group obviously decompressing after a long day at work, a few nursing pints alone in shadowed corners.

A glass display case set in the entry stops Dani dead in her tracks. Inside is an exquisite costume of deer leather, strung with shells and bone, crowned with a cascading headdress of gleaming black feathers. The mannequin’s arms stretch up, as if offering something to the sky.

Dani gets a peculiar sensation, a prickling of the invisible hairs along her ear; the soft brush of the inhale before a whisper.

“Pre-Christian Gaelic death shaman, dug out of a peat bog somewhere. Heard the owner of Ankou’s had to bribe someone at the British Museum to get it.”

“I’m Irish,” Dani says. “At least, part Irish. It’s weird to think…”

“That here’s your ancestor.” Dani nods. “Could have been you, few thousand years ago.”

“Hannah said it’s random, who becomes a Seeker.”

“Doesn’t run in families, no pattern we can find. But we know they’ve always been here. Back when this one was alive, they sat atop social society, right where they should be. Now they’re loathed by common folk, and everyone wonders why there’s more hauntings.” Jamie lights up. “Did you know there’s a tribe in South America that don’t bury their dead? When someone kicks the bucket the whole village comes together, and each member eats a bit of them. Then they offer up the bones to vultures and burn the house to the ground. They’ve got an oral tradition spanning a thousand years. Not a single mention of a haunting in all that time.”

Dani side-eyes her. “Planning a feast?”

Jamie’s eyes flit down. “I promise only to eat you when you’re alive.”

She chuckles at the reflexive backhand, limping toward the bar. “Come on, I’m thirsty.”

Jamie orders them frothy pints, motions Dani to a specific booth. “Look there.” A framed cover from a magazine titled _The Paranormal Pest_.

Dani gasps. “Hannah!” It’s a grainy picture of her standing proudly outside a run-down castle, three beaming men posing alongside. _MPA scrubs Donogal after 30 years abandoned_. Hannah sports an impressive afro and a brilliant smile, casually propped against a vintage _Breadmaker_.

“She’s a bit of a legend,” Jamie says. “Hard to get her to come here anymore on account of the fame.”

Dani takes an extra moment to look at the woman with probably countless accomplishments, a fearless slayer of homicidal ghosts, who just hours ago knelt in honor of an elementary teacher. She takes a long sip after settling on the bench. “Does it ever get less weird?”

Jamie purses her lips. “You get used to it. Well…some of it. Honestly, if someone’d told me two weeks ago I’d be sharing a drink here, with a Seeker, I’d have laughed in their face.”

“Sharing a bit more than a drink.”

Jamie bites her lip and turns her glass slowly. “Got that right.” 

From where they sit, Dani can see the glass case with it’s raven feather regalia. Can still, if she tilts her head just right, hear the dry rustle of a whisper in a language long dead. “Where are they?”

“What’d you mean?”

“Ghosts. They’re not here, obviously, where we are. Not all the way. But they’re not where I went.”

Jamie tsks. “I’m not really qualified to answer that kind of question.”

“Really?” Dani says, cocking an eyebrow. “So all those books you have are just cannibal case studies?”

Jamie laughs and spreads her hands. “Look, before today I was just a lowly Scrubber. I’m no Rectory professor. Even they might have trouble with a question like that.”

“Just…give me the short version.” Dani dips her chin. “I won’t tell Hannah you’ve been giving me after-school lessons.”

Jamie gives a wolfish look that says she’s contemplating the less public things she could be teaching her. “Alright. Lesson one.” She raps her knuckles on the wood. “What is this?”

“A table.”

“A table, are you sure?” Jamie smirks like she knows she’s playing a silly but necessary game.

Dani narrows her eyes. “I’m pretty sure it’s a table.” Jamie waits. “Ok…a…dead tree with legs? A thing we put stuff on?”

“Right. Now what’s a table?”

“A noun.”

Jamie smiles. “Not bad. It’s an idea, right? ‘Table’ is just a sound we make. Vowels and consonants. Vibrations in the air that represent an idea we want to impart.” Jamie runs her hand across the surface. “We have to have some way to describe this, to communicate. But we’re so good at it, we don’t see the thing itself anymore. The essence of it. We look and we see ‘table.’”

“So we see our idea instead of reality.”

Jamie nods. “The Veil is a place where…where everything is like that. Not the thing itself, but the idea of it. Visions without substance. Mind absent reality.”

“Illusions.”

“Worse. Only the recollection of illusions, twisted, backward, lingering. An infinite loop of dark memory. That’s where ghosts are, where they come from.”

“How do we know what it’s like, if we can’t go there?”

“Hell is of our own making. We can infer what it’s like from the spirits who bridge the gap to our world, the content of hauntings and writings from those who have been there.”

Dani shifts. “Seekers who’ve seen it?”

Jamie leans back. “Seekers don’t go there. It’s the core of attachment, there’s nothing there but suffering. But there is another lot willing to go. People who’d like to harness that kind of misery for their own ends.” She snorts. “They’re rare, thankfully. If they don’t fuck up and trap themselves in the Veil, the Black Badges take care of them.”

“So what did I see?”

“We call it the Void, because we don’t know what else to call it.” Jamie gestures with her glass. “And definitely don’t ask me about that, because I don’t bloody know.”

Dani twirls her glass, brooding.

More people file in, one or two nod toward Jamie as they settle down in booths. A woman with French braids, heeled boots, and a studded jacket casts a cool glance Dani’s way before waving. Jamie lifts her hand in greeting and takes a long swig from her glass. The woman follows her group to a booth opposite from them.

Dani gestures once her back is turned. “You dated her, once.”

Jamie chokes mid-sip and sloshes beer on the table. She mops it up with a napkin, wiping her chin and frowning. “Oi. You’re not allowed to turn those Seeker eyes my way.”

Dani laughs. “I don’t need to be enlightened to know when someone wants to be in my place.”

“No chance of that. Me and Maria, like oil and water.”

Maria gets up to fetch her table drinks, casting an occasional glance Jamie’s way.

“Ok, now you’ve peaked my interest. Details, please.”

Jamie gives a cocky smirk. “Obviously there’s something not right with me.”

Dani senses a real wound underneath the bluster. “Now you _really_ need to elaborate.”

“I’m sure you’ll find out what it is soon enough. Not really sure how you haven’t noticed yet.”

Dani sits back, making a list on her fingers. “So…you’re witty, painfully gorgeous, a cat in the sack…great taste in music, are some kind of award-winning ghost ninja, and you’re telling me that there’s a dealbreaker hiding in plain sight?”

Jamie wrinkles her nose, betrayed by a slight blush. “That’s right.”

“Mm.” Dani takes a sip, looking out on the burgeoning crowd. “Yeah, that makes total sense.”

Jamie taps her glass with a finger, battling a petulant frown. “Think you know something I don’t?”

Dani gestures with her beer. “Oh, I’m not the only one. Pretty sure Maria is on my side.”

Jamie casts a wandering glance to the opposite booth, where Maria sits up far too proudly, pointedly not looking their way. “Good Christ, she can’t still be hung up on me.”

“Higher than the moon,” Dani grins.

Jamie sighs, rolling her eyes. “I dunno, I just find it hard to get on with the living.”

“Not Hannah and Rebecca.”

“They’re different.”

“How so?”

Jamie sits up in mock anger. “Is this payback? From the first day we met?”

Dani laughs. “Definitely.”

She leans forward again, slim elbows on the table. “Hannah and Rebecca are real. They are who they are, no tricks, no games. They don’t have a motive.”

“Other people have motives.”

“Aye, haven’t you noticed?” Jamie can’t quite cover the edge in her voice. “There for the idea of the you, not the real you. Always trying to twist you into being something else. Something _they_ want. Using you to fill a hole.” She levels her gaze. “Not that hole.”

Dani smirks. “Maybe both.”

Jamie’s brilliant grin fades quickly back to an unsettled line. “People…disappear. Up and leave the minute it suits ‘em, the minute they see something they don’t fancy. At best, they prove themselves to be an utter disappointment. I guess I can’t ever decide. Is it them, or is it me? Maybe they see me better than I see myself.”

Jamie takes another swig, looks out on the crowd before tilting her head. “What’s your take then, if you don’t agree?”

“Oh I agree, I just…” Dani shrugs. “Sure. The idea of someone. The idea of me. My dad died when I was little. I learned pretty early what it was to be invisible.” Jamie leans in, rests her boot against Dani’s leg under the table.

“After that, I just sort of took care of everyone. Mom, then Eddie, my students. And that’s how my worth was measured. Being selfless.” Dani laughs. “ _Selfless_. What a word. I mean I agreed to marry someone, thought he was my best friend, and he had no idea I was dying inside.” Condensation beads on her glass, falling in tiny rivulets that she squashes under a thumb. “Motives…yeah. It’s clumsier than that though, isn’t it. Everyone is just flailing in the dark for what they need. Totally blind. Sometimes, anyway.” Dani shakes her head. “She knew, my mom. Found me out in tenth grade. Burned all the letters under my mattress, called her parents. Made sure I never saw her again.”

“Fuck,” Jamie whispers.

“So, I lied. My first haunting wasn’t at Bly. There’s always been the ghost of what if. What if Dad hadn’t had that heart attack, what if Mom never found those letters, what if Eddie…” she grits her teeth, it’s still too soon for that. “What if _I_ had been braver. What if someone had just _seen_ me, just once. Shown me what that was like.”

She looks at Jamie a long moment. “I could have died like that. Scared of everything. Scared of myself. I’d have gotten ripped apart on that crappy island, thinking everything was my fault. But I don’t…now I…” She takes a breath.

“Maybe you’ve got good reason to be cynical, but you’re not a cynic, not really. You play Billie Holiday on rainy days. Jolene has more toys than most celebrity children. You sing to her. You sing to your cat.” Dani shakes her head. “My drain tube fell out on you. This nasty, crusty thing fell right into your lap and you picked it up in your bare hands and didn’t even throw up for my sake. And you like, do this thing when you water your plants. Pinch the leaves so softly, like you’re making sure they’re ok. Your books aren’t all about death. You’ve got poetry and adventure novels hidden in those stacks. And even if none of that were true, there’s a reason people like Hannah and Rebecca will rally a fucking warship to save you. You do everything that’s best for those around you without a second thought.”

Jamie’s voice is husky with emotion despite the smirk. “Are you accusing me of being a romantic?”

“You’re pretty good at hiding. Not that good.” A pressure swells in her chest, an aching need to pull her close and whisper _who was it?_

Jamie stares at her hands, working up to something. Dani glimpses it again-the falling away of the front that hides someone older than their years, weary from dragging a burden alone.

“I told you,” she says finally. “No turning those Seeker eyes on me.”

\--

Dani doesn’t know what to call it; how she can sense even the slightest wilt in Jamie’s posture, the way her green eyes change shades when she goes to that place with the locked door.

The undercurrent lingers on the train ride home, in the brush of Jamie’s capable hands as she removes the sling and climbs under the sheets. Even pain is a gift: something can hurt about the way Jamie moves, the way she breathes, something that makes Dani pull her close and murmur soothing words in the dark.

Jamie allows it as one allows a dental procedure, stiff as a board but never pulling away. “It’s ok,” Dani whispers. _This is new for me, too_. One by one, Jamie’s muscles surrender. She threads a hesitant arm around Dani’s waist, settles in against her collarbone.

After a while, her breathing is even and soft. For the first time, Jamie falls asleep before her.

\--

Dani wakes with a start. It’s freezing; she pats the bed and finds lumpy covers pulled down to her knees. It’s as if she’s just closed her eyes, but she knows by the silence of the street outside that it’s the dead of night. Dim light from the curtains silhouettes a seated figure at the edge of the bed.

“Jamie?” Dani sits up carefully.

Jamie faces the wall, glistening under a fine sheen of sweat. “Touch ‘er an I’ll kill ya,” she growls, accent thick enough to cut.

Dani hesitates. She learned somewhere not to wake someone in the middle of a night terror. The explanation eludes her memory, just a vague warning that things could get much worse. Jamie lets out a long, disembodied breath. “John said I could sleep ‘ere, few weeks. Two-forty one eight four. I got a knife in ‘im. Right where it hurts.”

“Jamie,” Dani whispers as quietly as she can. “Lay down. You’re dreaming.”

Jamie’s head tilts in a grimace. Her eyelids flutter. “Fuckin’ twit, said don’t touch ‘er.” Her knuckles shine white, fists clenched so tight they tremble. “Soot in the street, that’s where you’ll lie. Anywhere but this place.”

“You’re safe,” Dani breathes. “You’re safe, Jamie. Lay down.”

“Don’t you fuckin’ touch her.” She lets out another shuddering breath and a painful groan. “Said he wouldn’t but he did. Couldn’t do nothin’. ‘M out now.”

Softly as she can, Dani rests her hand on Jamie’s damp back. The edge of her shoulder blades flex and tremble beneath her palm. “Jamie,” she whispers into her ear. “It’s ok. You’re dreaming.”

She laughs, a hyena cackle that gives Dani goosebumps.

“Jus’ you. Not one for this. Rosie’s dead. Tol’ you weren’t nothing for it,” the words come out mixed with gibberish, louder and louder. “Anywhere but this fuckin’ place. Two’s worth coming down. Out in the street where you belong. Rosie’s fuckin’ dead. Why don’t you just go! You fucking shite!” She’s yelling now, raising her fists at the wall.  
  


Dani touches her arm gently. “Jamie,” she says, full volume. “Jamie wake up.”

At first, nothing happens, just a torrent of yelling and a stiffening of her body, and then Jamie has her by the wrist, shoving her backwards into the mattress in a shocking burst of strength.

“Easy! Easy!” Dani cries, cringing against the lightning bolts of hot agony shooting from her shoulder. Jamie stares at her with wild unfocused eyes, jaw set. “Jamie, it’s me. It’s me.”

Jamie blinks hard, her grip still a vice around Dani’s wrist. Dani reaches up and cups her face with her other hand. “You were dreaming, baby. It’s ok, you’re safe. It’s me.”

“Dani…”

Dani nods, watching the recognition slowly settle.

Jamie looks at her hand around Dani’s wrist and lets go like she’s grasping a hot coal. “Jesus, what am I…I’ve hurt you!”

“It’s alright.”

Jamie touches the sweat on her brow, dissolves into a panic pawing over Dani’s arms. “Have I hurt you? Did he…” she glances over her shoulder, “has he gone?”

“Jamie,” Dani says firmly, sitting up. “Jamie, breathe. It was a dream.”

Jamie shivers, a hand to her forehead. The thick accent softens again. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Dani leans in and kisses the bridge of her nose, each eyebrow, smoothing her hair until Jamie’s breathing slows.

“Oi,” she croaks. “Warned ya about the skeletons, didn’t I?”

“Are you ok?” Dani whispers.

Jamie wipes her face on her shirt and sniffs. “Course, fine.”

“Jamie.” Dani pulls her face up again until she reluctantly meets her gaze. 

“I don’t need you to…I’m ok.”

She goes to pull away again, and Dani surprises them both by grabbing a fistful of Jamie’s shirt to hold her in place. “Then tell me what you need.”

She’s not sure what does it – the fact that they were just wrestling, the feel of Jamie’s sweaty t-shirt, or the emotions running hot, but a switch flips. Jamie stares at her for an electric moment, eyes heavy and asking. Dani answers with a jerk of her fist, crashing into her like a high-powered magnet.

There’s a moment of awkward struggle to kick away the sheets and then she’s on top of her, tongue slipping into her mouth, grabbing Dani’s breasts through her thin tank top. Jamie whips her shorts down her legs and off into a corner. Dani manages to claw the shirt over Jamie’s head and rakes her nails down her back with a viciousness previously unthinkable. She bucks her hips in, pressing her down, grinding against Dani her until it’s almost enough to make her come on its own.

“Fuck, Jamie…” she gasps. Jamie runs her teeth over an ear, snaking a tongue in and relishing the way Dani groans. Jamie digs her fingers into Dani’s thighs until she skirts the line of pain and pleasure, watching with a pleased sneer as she twists against it.

“Tell me what you want,” Dani gasps.

Jamie tilts her head, pulling down Dani’s lower lip with a thumb. “There is something.” For a moment there is a gentle pause in her voice. “If _you_ want it.”

Dani nods, dizzily wondering if there’s anything on earth she would object to with Jamie looking at her like that. She stands and opens a drawer. Belt buckles jangle and zip with the tightening of a strap. Jamie slides back under the sheets, easing down between her legs. Dani waits, wide-eyed, until she gasps against the press of it, cold and then warm against her leg.

The caution remains, a hesitation in the fire blazing in Jamie’s eyes. “Is this alright? I know you…well, you probably have…”

She almost laughs, looking up at Jamie’s porcelain skin, the flex of her shoulders as she hovers above. There couldn’t be anything more different about this than what she references, like trying to remember a the depths of winter from under the equatorial sun, with its hot wet banishment of all that came before.

“This won’t be like that,” Dani says. “Not with you.” She hooks her fingers around the leather straps and tugs Jamie in, who bows her head with a groan. “Can you feel that?” she pants, amazed.

She nods. As if to prove it, Jamie braces over her and flexes, tongue trailing along her neck, until the parting tension between her legs makes Dani’s eyes roll back.

“Do you want it?”

Dani looks her dead in the eye: this Jamie, minus her trademark sparkling confidence. Jamie raw and controlling and dangerous. “I want it.”

There is a twitch of a smile at the corner of Jamie’s mouth, a tilt of her hips, and suddenly she slides in.

“Oh, shit,” Dani hisses, involuntarily bucking as she adjusts.

Jamie pauses there, body warm against Dani’s, filling her completely. Dani takes short little breaths into her neck until the stretch passes.

She’s kind at first, a swaying rock, freed hands trailing over Dani’s legs and chest. When Jamie bends near to kiss a shoulder Dani takes the opportunity to sink her teeth into Jamie’s neck and exhale into her ear.

“You don’t need to be nice.”

It has the intended effect: Jamie meets her eyes and presses in, deeper and deeper until Dani clutches her back with a whimper, pulls back and thrusts in again, agonizing and slow.

“ _Is that right?_ ”

Dani cries out as the pace increases but the relentless force of each thrust is anything but _nice_.

“Course not. Because you’re not a _nice_ girl, are you Dani Clayton?”

Hearing her full name on Jamie’s lips breaks something open. Dani shakes her head with a filthy smile. Jamie grabs her chin, pushes her face to the side, fingers in her mouth, fucking her harder with a glittering grin. Dani sucks her fingers for all she’s worth, muffled cries boosting Jamie’s savagery like predator to pray.

The speed increases to a frantic pace. It’s this – her two hands free. It’s the angle and the view, the closeness that makes all that came before worth it. Dani is pushing back against her with the heretical mantra Jamie releases from within: _more, more, more_. Jamie’s eyelids flutter closed and she curses. The fingers in Dani’s mouth slip out and grab her hip for purchase.

“Oh my God,” Dani gasps, “are you…? Can you?” Jamie nods rapidly. Dani throws her head back. “Oh God yes, yes.”

She feels the moment it happens, the curl of Jamie’s lips against her as every muscle in her body goes rigid.

She somehow keeps her hand moving, and Dani absolutely can’t, it’s not possible…but she might – she does. It’s quick and intense as a lightning bolt: a surge of clamping pressure nearly smothered by its own intensity that screams her final _yes_ into the ceiling. She didn’t think this was possible.

Add it to the list.

Jamie collapses into her arms. They can’t stop moving against each other even with the climax come and gone, shifting and kissing and coming down from the improbable perfection of it.

_Never in my life_ , Dani thinks, and giggles. She can’t quite finish the thought, but add any ending that captures the bewildering high of this, and she’s there. Jamie props up on an elbow, sweeping sweat-plastered curls from her forehead. Dani flashes a goofy, spaced-out smile. Jamie laughs along with her then, and Jesus God, she’s still inside her. Dani winds and presses, taking one last bit of feeling from it, but she hasn’t forgotten how it began.

Jamie separates from her gently, obeying a gentle push, until she lies panting on her back.

Dani works one buckle free, and then the other, pulling the harness away and placing it aside. She runs a palm along the flat prominence of Jamie’s sternum, the blade of each hip, taking her time. Fingertips explore the scar eroded into skin like a riverbed, the expansion of Jamie’s rib cage with each breath.

Dani has been with a few women, groping experimental heat in the back of cars and bar bathrooms. She’s never had the opportunity, like this, to appreciate the dip of muscle beneath a collarbone, the exquisite supple curve of each breast. Never felt safe enough to look so boldly, to read a person’s body like braille, and certainly never one like this: lean and angular, completely arrestingly beautiful.

Jamie watches her with sad caution, as if she still can’t quite believe that someone would want to touch her like this, or that she would let them. Not long ago that might have left a crushing uncertainty in Dani’s mind, a hesitation in her fingers, but something real has changed.

There had been no bursting open of the closet door, no joyful epiphany of liberation that neatly explained a lifetime of suffocation. Instead it felt like the creeping realization that one has gone mad – a hand that wandered on its own, eyes drawn to forbidden places, and a terrifying sense that she didn’t _belong here_. She was an imposter wearing the clothes of Dani Clayton, wearing her skin, brushing her hair, going about her life with a desperate smile plastered to her face forever in fear of being found out. Even when she arrived home that day to find Karen Clayton seated calmly on her bed, surrounded by pages of confessions too illicit even for whom they were addressed to, her mother didn’t acknowledge it. She didn’t say the word aloud. More than watching her letters burn, more than a decade of averted eyes and dodged truths, this made it clear: what Dani is was unspeakable. A curse that would be made real if whispered in the light of day.

On a rare morning alone years later Dani passed by a mirror and flinched so hard she sent a splatter of coffee across the baseboards. The gasp ended in a laugh, shaky hand to her chest. It was just her own reflection. She went and retrieved a towel, wiped up the mess. When she stood she took a last look and hesitated – were her eyes really that color? She moved within an inch of the glass, peering at her own cobalt irises, and something stirred beneath her skin. A pleading, caged animal looking out at her from the fleshy orbs hanging in her skull. She had a vision of reaching up, hooking her fingertips into the seam of her hairline, and peeling her face off.

Instead she ripped the mirror from the wall, strode across the perfectly manicured lawn, and threw it violently in the trash. Eddie never noticed.

The myth was enticing. All the strings of her misery neatly clipped by that final recognition. Dani the frog prince of her own story, freed by a kiss.

How silly that all seems now, even kneeling before the stunning altar of Jamie’s body. She can’t yet unlearn a lifetime of repressing every flicker of want, decades of grooming that programed shame into her very DNA. The knee-jerk terror is still there, still clawing at her insides before every movement.

And yet, she moves. She moves through this new life with the hitching hesitancy of someone woken from a coma and learning to walk again. The paralysis is gone. Dani can reach out and test the rough-textured edge of the hair between Jamie’s legs, can meet her gaze even when it makes her heart pound with a hot injection of anxiety. Even when it renders her voice to a whisper. And for now, that is enough.

“This ok?”

Jamie nods. Dani takes her hand, rubbing her lifeline with a thumb. Those hands. At once handsome and graceful, blue veins converging at her wrist, snaking along a forearm to the bicep Dani presses her lips against. She tugs the blankets back over them, settles in close to search the lines of her neck, jaw, finally to trace the outlines of her face.

Jamie closes her eyes to the soft tickle of Dani’s fingertips. They rest in the ringing silence.

“It was my mum.” 

Dani stills, palm settling on the cratered beginning of Jamie’s scar. She feels her abdomen rise and fall, even and soft, and the thump of her pulse beneath it. She presses the bridge of her nose against Jamie’s shoulder and waits.

“I was eleven. She never was around much – out drinkin’ with any man who’d come her way. But my brother Mickey was born, so she was home for a bit. It was a Sunday. Dunno why I remember that. I was in the front room, playing. And eh, Mickey starts crying.

“Well that weren’t unusual, he was just a baby and he had some problems. Colicky, and so on. I ignored it, until it went on and on and I started wonderin’. Called for her, but she didn’t answer.

“There was water on the floor. Water everywhere, runnin’ down the hall from under the door. Mickey was there, in the bathroom, in the crib.” Jamie shifts, lets out a breath. “The tub faucet was still on. Empty bottle on the ground. And her face was under. Like she was sleeping. Except her fingers…” she swallows. “Her fingers were twitchin’.

“I was so little. I couldn’t get her out. But it was instinct to try, you know. I slipped, I…I hit my head. And finally, it occurs to me to drain the bath. I didn’t understand, thought she’d be alright…that she’d just wake up.” She laughs hollowly, a forced sound that breaks Dani’s heart. “Just a dumb kid, wasn’t I?”

Jamie’s tone remains impassive, as if she is describing some banal event and not the catastrophic end of childhood. “Dad kept us for another few years. Kept the flat. I had to use that tub, wash myself in that tub. Saw her face every time I took a shower. And of course, started seein’ other faces around. Rotten wailing things. But I wasn’t scared of ‘em. Felt right. Like the way things should be.

“Somehow or another Dad found out Mickey wasn’t his and stopped coming ‘round. They shut the electric off. We ran out of food. Eventually, I got caught stealing from the corner store. The man that picked me up from the police station was a stranger, and that was that. Shipped me off to one foster home, Mickey to another. Some were alright, but I was quick to ruin my chances. Next ones worse. Ran away from those perverted fucks. Couldn’t find my brother. Then I was on the street, and...” Jamie’s eyes open, pupils wide and unfocused. “And then I was…”

Dani ignores the protest of pain from her shoulder and takes Jamie’s face in both hands. “Hey.”

She blinks rapidly, present again. “M’sorry...”

“Don’t…” Dani shakes her head, voice cracking. “Don’t apologize.”

They stare at each other in the dark. It’s familiar to Dani, the agonizing helplessness of a child’s unkind fate. Watching from the shore as they’re carried away by the swift waters of bad luck. Dani always finds herself mouthing a prayer to a God rarely spoken to: let her pull them out, wring their sodden suffering into her own heart. Jamie Taylor’s might fill a bathtub, a lake, might pull her under with more pain than any person deserves. She would happily drown to soothe it.

Except, Jamie is looking at her like she already has.

“Sometimes I feel like all I’ve ever done is survive things,” she whispers. “And I dunno what changed, but recently I’d started to wonder if surviving wasn’t the end of it. Maybe it was Hannah and Rebecca, or finding Jolene in a dumpster. Didn’t seem right, couldn’t trust it. Tried my best to forget and carry on like always. But I’d wake up, and there it was again. That feeling.” She swallows. “And then I stepped off that ferry and saw you.”

A bolt pierces Dani clean through.

“I saw you, too,” she whispers.

Jamie breathes deep, tears threatening. “Shit,” she exhales.

Dani smiles brokenly. “Yeah.”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never…”

Jamie’s eyes cut her off, so near and full they hush all thought. She touches her lips with delicate wonder before kissing them.

Dani knows it then: this is the closest the living can get to that final moment of letting go, stepping over the precipice she saw at the end of all things. She kisses Jamie back with her whole self, until they’ve shifted so that every inch of skin touches, their hands bound up in each other’s hair.

Dani pulls back with her forehead against Jamie’s, dizzy. More than peering into the Void, this makes death real for her: the frailty of this other soul in her hands, the inevitability of being parted. Time stretches and thins. Mortality shimmers in the distance, illuminating everything in its beauty.

“One day at a time,” Jamie says against her lips, as if she heard her, as if she’ll follow Dani around every frightening corner until there are none left. “That’s all anyone has.”

\--

The phone rings while Jamie is in the bathroom. Dani’s hand hesitates over the receiver; answering is an oddly intimate act, even having slept in Jamie’s bed a week.

Jamie’s voice calls over the running water in mock femininity (and what, Dani has to admit, is a very convincing imitation of an American accent). “Pick it up, darling! I’m indisposed.”

Dani raises it to her ear, clearing her throat. “Uh, Taylor residence.”

“Dani.”

She covers her face with a hand, bracing for a deluge of jokes. “Hi, Rebecca.”

“Have you spoken to Hannah?”

“No, I was expecting her to call.” Dani glances at the clock. It’s after 10am already. Disquiet stirs in her gut. “Why?”

“I haven’t heard from her, either.” Jamie appears in the bathroom doorway, toweling her hair with a concerned look.

“She’s probably busy,” Dani says uneasily. “They got Wingrave, right? She’s probably just busy with that.”

“But she said she was going to call, didn’t she? And bring you to MPA. Said she wanted me to come with in the morning, before she left.”

“Well, have you called her at work?”

“I tried, but you know, you can’t get through ever. Bloody been on hold for an hour.” Rebecca laughs nervously. “And erm, I’ve just gone by her flat. I’ve got a key…” Jamie walks over and sits next to Dani, listening. “Nothing really amiss, but she’s got loads of missed calls on her machine. The post is in, on the floor. It doesn’t...it doesn’t look like she ever came home last night.”

The pit in Dani’s stomach deepens. “We’ll meet you at the Ministry. I’m sure she’s there, Rebecca.”

“Sure, right. Probably just stayed late.”

Dani hangs up the phone and looks at Jamie, heart pounding. “She’s probably still there, right?”

But Jamie doesn’t answer. She’s already moving for the door.

\--

Rebecca pulls up in her car just as they arrive. Dani didn’t spare any time to wear her sling; the wound is closing and she moves better now without it.

The Ministry of Paranormal Affairs has the hulking edifice of any self-important government building, replete with Greek columns and an unnecessary amount of marble stairs. If anything, Dani thinks it looks a bit sadder than the others parliamentary facades lining the block, its large silver crux gone dull with acid rain.

“Come on,” Rebecca says, brows knitted. “We better hope our clearances have gone through.”

They’re stopped inside by security, a man with a walrus mustache and a look of long-suffering boredom. “Badges,” he barks.

Rebecca and Jamie plant their IDs on the table. The scanner shrieks a tone that can only mean one thing. “No clearances, no entry.”

Rebecca grumbles impatiently. “They’ve just been put in by _Operator_ Grose.”

“Never heard of ‘er,” he says, unmoved. “Now you’d best get on.”

Dani raises her head to the sound of boots clocking along the marble floor. An attractive woman in a smart business suit halts mid-step, her dark hair plaited back in perfect French braids.

“Listen,” Jamie begins. “I dunno what hole in the ground you’re living in, but Hannah Grose – ”

“Jamie?”

Jamie freezes, mouth open.

“Sorry Maria,” the security man growls. “This Scrubber here thought she could waltz without the proper clearances. Was just about to show them the door.”

Maria frowns in confusion as the guard stands, putting a hand to the silver Billy club on his belt. “Alright you, outside!” Dani focuses on her in desperation. Another second and the moment will slip.

_Maria_.

Maria flinches with a yelp, dropping the stack of paperwork she’s carrying. The guard turns with a baffled look. “You alright?”

“Let them in,” Maria stammers. She shakes something off and smiles at him politely. “Sorry, I completely forgot to tell you, George. I’m taking these three on a tour today.”

George shuffles over and helps her collect the fallen papers. “Oh that’s alright, no harm done,” he says, tone brightening. “Looks like you’re having a bit of a day, anyhow.”

Rebecca nudges Jamie with a whisper. “ _These aren’t the droids you’re looking for_.”

Papers in hand, Maria takes a breath and forces a thin smile. “If you’ll follow me this way.” She leads them through a doorway to an office fronting a massive room of filling cabinets. She closes the door and flips the lock.

“Now,” she says in the uncomfortable silence. “If you’ll be so kind to explain to me why I just broke the fucking law and allowed you three in here, I’d appreciate it.”

“Didn’t know you worked here,” Jamie grumbles.

Maria crosses her arms. “Guess you wouldn’t, since you stopped calling. Internal Affairs secretary. I was promoted last month.”

“Gotta start somewhere, I suppose.”

Rebecca glances between the two of them, sensing the temperature drop. “Erm, maybe we should…”

Dani pushes Jamie aside with a look that says now is _definitely_ not the time. “Maria. We need your help.”

Maria’s confident front wavers. She looks Dani over feet to crown, backing away slightly. “How did you do that, out there?”

“Even if I could tell you, I don’t have time to explain. We need to find Hannah Grose. She’s missing. We need to know if she’s here.”

Maria’s eyes narrow at a rather obvious half-moon bruise on Dani’s neck. “And I suppose, you – whoever you are – expect me to risk my job and hand over confidential information just because of some ventriloquist party trick.”

Here we go. Zombies, murderous plots, and now a woman scorned. Dani swallows her pride and puts as much desperation in her voice as she can. “Please. We really need your help.”

Maria smirks. “Looks like you’re helping yourself to enough of what’s mine.”

“Enough of this,” Rebecca says. “Let’s just beat it out of her.”

Maria stiffens. “Touch me and you’ll be collecting your teeth on the way out.”

Jamie moves between them, posture soft. “Maria,” she says quietly, touching her arm. “Please. For old time’s sake.”

For all the years Dani spent trapped in a passionless relationship, she had regarded jealousy as an amusing but perplexing facet of TV romances that she thought herself naturally immune to. Just an overreaction. An affliction, perhaps, of the immature.

So it take her a moment to name the sudden, screaming fury that erupts when Maria bows her pretty head and smiles, to appreciate why her guts turn to a bubbling cauldron of acid when Jamie moves her thumb just a fraction of an inch across her bare arm. The sheer misery of it is stunning, made infinitely worse when Maria casts the smallest glance Dani’s way.

She shakes her head with a resigned chuckle. “Still can’t say no to you.” Her eyes cut across Dani one last time before she removes herself from under Jamie’s fingers. She sits down snidely at her desk, unlocks a cabinet and pulls out a stack of paperwork.

Dani recovers enough to lean in; it’s an attendance log. Maria’s manicured nail traces the names down through yesterday. “Hannah Grose, OP. Checked in, 21:22. Accessed the holding cells at 21:34, departed holding cells at 21:39, signed out at the front desk at 21:48.”

“She was…she was only in there for five minutes,” Jamie says.

Rebecca’s voice is thin. “And then she left in a hurry.”

“Take us to Wingrave,” Dani says. “We need to get to that holding cell.”

Maria stiffens, frightened of her again for the slightest instant. “I…I can’t.”

Dani grips the desk, ready to let fly the considerable storm she’s been holding back. Maria flings up the paper like a shield between them, pointing to the entry. “I can’t take you, because he’s not here.”

“What do you – ” Dani reads the text, mechanical and ominous.

“Henry Wingrave was released last night.”

“Released!” Rebecca shouts. Maria motions for her to lower her voice, flipping through more papers. She shakes her head.

“We couldn’t hold him. Too much time gone by to prove he was the one who hid that body in the lake. Charged him with Concealment of a Hazardous Condition, but that’s only a Class 2 offense, and that isn’t grounds to…” she trails off under three icy stares.

Rebecca points. “What time? What time did they release him?”

“Four hours before Hannah got here.”

“Fuck,” Jamie breathes.

Dani flexes her numb fingers, pacing. “We’ll find her. We just have to…” she loses the words, suddenly crushed by the size of London. They’re not on Bly anymore, where a shout on a clear day could find half the village.

“Well, I’m sure she went after this bloke,” Maria says carefully.

“Think we beat you to that conclusion,” Dani snaps.

“And after you’re done patting yourself on the back for your unmatchable genius, maybe you’ll be interested in this,” Maria says dryly. She slides over a small card. “Forwarding address for a Mr. Henry Wingrave.” She perks her eyebrows. “So they know where to send the fine.”

\--

“Can I just say,” Rebecca says, swerving between cars, “that your taste in women has significantly improved.”

Rebecca runs a red light, cross-traffic horns blasting as they narrowly miss causing a wreck. Dani clutches the oh-shit bar, trying not to think about how dying felt.

The government district speeds by in a blur. Five minutes. Jamie said Wingrave’s apartment was five minutes away, but conveniently failed to mention the Autobahn speeds and flat out disregard for traffic laws required.

“Really? Are you really trying to comment on my dating life right now?”

Rebecca downshifts, burning tires as they take a hairpin left onto a street so narrow Dani could touch the parked cars as they pass. This would probably be a bad time to mention she gets car-sick.

Rebecca tsks. “You’re not getting out of a lecture just because I’m distracted.”

“Distracted?” Jamie barks. “Driving is something you’re distracted _from_ , not _by_ , Jessel.”

They emerge onto a larger street, hemmed in by traffic lights. “Alright, I’ll let you off the hook,” Rebecca sighs. She whips the steering wheel and careens over a median, sending screaming pedestrians scurrying out of the way. “Only because I know the tongue-lashing you’re going to get later.” Her brown eyes appear in the rearview mirror and give Dani a wink.

Jamie looks helplessly over her shoulder. “You know I did that for Hannah, right? I wouldn’t...I mean, I don’t…”

“I’m sor-ry, Da-ni,” Rebecca enunciates slowly. “That’s how you pronounce it, Taylor.”

All Dani can muster is a weak, nauseated grimace. “Its fine…really…I’m o – OH SHIT!”

Rebecca slams on the breaks and swerves as a truck turns left in front of them. Cars skid to the sides, horns blaring, as they speed the wrong direction down the center of a one-way street.

“Wrong way! Wrong way!” Jamie cries.

“I’m fucking aware!” Rebecca yells, finally cutting into a right-hand turn down a side-street so narrow it would count as a bike path anywhere else. They emerge into a tight-quartered block, blissfully empty of cars or people.

Jamie squints at the passing street signs. “Oi, I think this is getting close. Let’s stop here.”

Dani squeaks as they abruptly halt and reverse into a parking space. She steps onto the sidewalk in nauseated relief.

The neighborhood stretches out before them in a bleak row of two-story complexes. Jamie clutches the scrap of paper, peering up at the numbers stenciled high above the entries. “That one,” she says. They approach slowly, obvious as a gang of masked thieves in the mid-day light.

Jamie crutches up to the door, jiggles the handle and sighs. “Locked.”

The backside of the complex sports tiny plots of grass perpetually shaded by a neighboring building. A small gate hangs open. Rebecca creeps up the wooden steps and peers through French doors. “No light,” she says quietly. “Don’t think anyone’s here.”

Dani twitches, desperation crawling up her neck like a spider. “Let me see that,” she says, taking a crutch from Jamie. She glances across the complex over her shoulder. Nothing moves. `

“Poppins, what’re y-”

Dani breaks the glass in one quick jab, sweeping the shards away with a corner-to-corner scrape. She reaches through and pops the door lock before handing the crutch back to Jamie with a shrug. “Teacher skills. You know, in case the school ever catches fire.”

“Blimey,” Jamie mutters, equal parts impressed and aroused.

Dani eases the door open and steps into a dim kitchen, listening.

A dog barks in one of the nearby complexes; otherwise there is silence. The air is cold and still. Dani leads the way, wincing around every corner, expecting to be brained with a lamp or shot by a lurking Wingrave. But every room is the same – the study, the bathroom, and upstairs bedroom, all silent and deserted.

Rebecca lets out a frustrated huff and flips the lights in the downstairs entry, where they’ve circled back after combing every room. “Dead fucking end.”

Jamie rests against the wall with a groan. “No sign of Hannah or…anything else. Like no one lives here at all.”

Dani frowns at her. “Yeah…”

Jamie considers it again. “No pictures. No dirty laundry.” She looks around the room, scraping a toe along the floor. “Dust everywhere.”

“Like no one lives here at all,” Dani repeats.

“Where is she?” Rebecca says, arms crossed against the chill. “Why wouldn’t she tell us if she was alright?”

“Because she’s not alright,” Jamie says. “I can feel it. Something’s gone wrong.”

Dani wants to object, reassure them. But she senses it, too: something off-balance, a crackle in the air, as if lightning struck here just a few minutes ago.

“Where do we go now?” Rebecca asks in the quiet.

Dani barely the words. Something is there, in the hallway. She walks toward it without knowing exactly what’s pulling her forward, slowly striding past generic framed art and an old mirror in the hall.

“Dani?”

“Do you…” Dani recoils, turns her head even as she takes another step. “Do you smell that?”

“Smell wha - ”

Jamie shushes Rebecca and limps slowly after Dani.

“It’s like…” She inhales deeply. “Like a…”

“Like what?” Jamie whispers.

“Like the tube, like the Underground. But worse.” She turns to Jamie, the safest direction in a sudden maze of senses.

“What is it, Dani?” Jamie asks, eyes soft and intense. Rebecca wavers a few feet behind, clearly frightened. It takes Dani a moment to realize why.

The hallway mirror is beside her. “Shit,” she breathes, gazing into the reflection.

It would be an understatement to say her eyes have gone dark. What they are is the absence of anything solid, gaping pits that pull in the very light around them. Jamie touches her arm.

“It’s alright, Poppins. Focus.”

“I can…” _feel the wallpaper._ Smell Jamie. Cedar and vanilla, and Dani’s own scent on her skin. Rebecca’s lotion, the faintest whiff of her toothpaste. She can hear the rustle of fabric against their chests as they breathe. The screaming texture of everything leaps out in an overwhelming flood of sensation. If she focused hard enough, Dani is sure she could hear worms moving in the earth stories below them.

“Show me,” Jamie says, holding on without fear. “Take me to it.”

“It’s, God it’s everywhere.” But no, it _is_ coming from somewhere. Pungent, foul and nauseating, offensive and unrelenting. “What the fuck _is_ that?” She looks up at Rebecca, who shakes her head rapidly.

“I don’t smell anything, Dani.”

Dani lets out a growl of frustration. It’s maddening, a dead rat in the wall, a garbage can in the sun, cracking open a Tupperware lid to a steam of maggots and rot.

“Where is it?” she nearly yells, clawing out. The wallpaper rips away in a thin strip. She hits it again, harder, bruising her palm. “Where the fuck is that…ugh!” She wipes at her face desperately, trying to rid herself of it.

Jamie grips her shoulders. “Dani. Where is it?”

“It’s here!” she shouts, punching past. At the last moment she panics, about to break her fist on the sheetrock, but the blow breaks through as if the wall is made of paper.

“Bloody hell,” Rebecca mutters. “Seekers know karate, too?”

Jamie moves Dani aside and rips the panel from the wall: a flimsy board, plastered with wallpaper to hide a switch. Jamie flips it.

Dani’s ears follow the soft click of an electric current. She rips the runner from the floor, where the grain of the hardwood changes abruptly along a thin line. Their eyes might not see it, but she can.

A trap door.

Dani trails her fingers along the edge set flush with the floorboards. Someone went through a lot of trouble to make it nearly invisible, but she finds it – a tiny depression where a button has popped up. She presses it and steps back as the door raises with a hiss.

Stairs lead down into shadow.

Dani has a flash of the cellar at Bly, Charlotte taking the steps one by one in a satin dress. An amorphous danger lies heavy in the air. “Stay,” she breathes, an animal pulse threading through the back of her eyes. “I’ll go.”

“Like fuck,” Jamie says, tossing one crutch aside.

“Two goddamn heroes,” Rebecca grumbles, muscling them both aside. “You plan to fight whatever’s down there with your collective three arms and legs? I’ll lead.” She takes a deep breath and starts down into the darkness with a determined glare. This is the part in the movie, Dani thinks, where they all die.

She runs a hand along the wall, blindly feeling out the stairs beneath each step. The temperature drops a degree with each foot of descent into the subterranean darkness. The stench is thick, almost liquid now in her lungs, stoking an itching rage like a far-off war drum. Every one of her senses throbs alongside wild fear in prickling accuracy.

They reach the bottom. The faint square of light from above does nothing to penetrate the inky blackness. Dani brushes by Rebecca, forging ahead by instinct. The hairs on her arms tingle, guiding her like nocturnal antennae to the center of the room.

Jamie clears her throat. “Dani…could you, eh, seek us a light switch?”

The outline of a cord dangles in front of her. She pulls it.

The florescent bulbs momentarily shock her vision in a searing white glare. Dani shields her brow and looks down. What she sees can’t be right. She doesn’t believe it until Rebecca shrieks and Jamie scrambles backward to the wall in a panicked escape.

The concrete floor is slick with blood under her shoes.

The basement is a long room. White walls are lined with metal work tables. Atop them sit steel pots, glass jars with swirling contents, and what appear to be preserved body parts. On another, an arrangement of surgical blades, tweezers, and a saw speckled with sticky chunks of gore. The wall at the far end is painted with notes and incantations in an unrecognizable language.

Beneath the symbols sits the largest table, where the unmistakable outlines of a body are covered in a sheet.

A steady stream of blood drips from under the fabric, trickling slowly toward the drain Dani stands upon.

Rebecca chokes on a sob, frozen in place. Jamie pants flat against the wall, eyes locked on a small glittering thing near Dani’s feet:

Hannah’s necklace.

Dani bends down and picks up the crucifix with a trembling hand, its chain broken among shards of glass and splatters of silver. One of the bottles of Special Sauce is still intact, as if it rolled from the hand of someone knocked to the floor.

She stands again. That _smell_. She has to know. Has to see.

“Dani…” Jamie breathes.

“It isn’t her,” Dani whispers. She can’t be sure if she’s wishing it or knowing it. She slips the necklace in her pocket, pinches the soiled covering and takes a breath.

“It isn’t her.”

The fabric abruptly jolts: something claws out and grabs her from under the sheet.

Dani slips on the wet floor and falls backward with a scream. A human form rises under the sheet like a child’s costume come to nightmarish life. Jamie lunges between them, crutch pointed like a lance, but the shape is caught with a _clink_ and falls back to the table.

Dani scrambles up with Jamie’s help, wiping blood-stained palms on her pants. Rebecca rips the sheet free, jumping back into a fighting stance.

She relaxes and sniffs, dabbing her tears on a sleeve. “It’s a…it’s a trench golem.”

Dani approaches the table, clinging to Jamie’s arm for all she’s worth.

The man – half a man, in a faded green uniform and dented army helmet – hisses, reaching for them with a peeling, blackened arm before the silver chain around his neck pulls tight again. Entrails hang from his shredded torso, oozing fluids and blood onto the floor in a continuous rain. One popped-out eye sways from its artery like a grisly talisman against his cheek.

Jamie frowns. “The fuck’s he doing with one of them?” She glances at Dani. “Vintage ghost, common after the War. Couldn’t walk anywhere in Europe without tripping over one. I thought they were all cleaned up.” She shakes her head. “One hasn’t been seen in…”

“Decades,” Rebecca finishes. She crosses her arms. “Alright, Inspector. What’s going on here?”

“This is some Black Badge shit,” Jamie mutters, rubbing the back of her neck. “But…alright. Trench golems are placid, easy to handle. Like a pet, really.”

Rebecca looks at the gurgling ghost, mouth set. “But still a PM.”

“Meaning you can trap them.”

A creeping chill settles over Dani as she glances over the horrifying tray of surgical tools. “And experiment on them.” 

Jamie walks over to the table of jars, peering at the contents. Other objects litter the tables: remnants of a fertilizer bag, a half-dissected kitchen timer. Dani catches her own reflection in a stainless steel tray, eyes glittering like obsidian.

She squats down, touching the broken glass. The remnants of Special Sauce glitter on her fingertips, still warm. Her heart drops: they probably just missed the fight. Some Seeker. She’s found a torture chamber, but not Hannah. If only that stink were gone, she could think for a second, she could breathe. She could –

She startles upright. The smell. She’d almost forgotten. Dani leans over, taking a deep whiff of the ghost on the table.

It’s not him.

“You guys – ” Dani begins.

There is a sharp _snap_ as a hidden mechanism flings open one of the jars. Jamie recoils, blinking, then picks up the container curiously.

Vapor spills over the edge and trails heavily along the floor. “Taylor! Don’t breathe it!” Rebecca hisses, backing Dani to the wall with an outstretched arm. “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Dani pushes Rebecca away. Something is wrong. “Jamie?” She turns her head to look at them with a strange expression. Dani’s voice wavers. “Jamie, put the jar down.”

Jamie sets the container at the edge of the table mindlessly. It tips from the edge and shatters on the concrete floor. Vapor spreads over their shoes, crackling as it hits the silver splatters.

Rebecca snatches up a crutch and starts for the stairs. “Grab her and let’s get the hell out of here!”

Dani yanks Jamie by her jacket. “Come on!” She doesn’t budge. This close, the dark specks across Jamie’s face are visible. They begin undulating, slithering and as if alive.

Jamie laughs drunkenly and spreads her arms. “But this is exactly where we should be.” Dani tugs but Jamie snatches her wrist, drags her back into the table. More jars tip over and burst into pieces at their feet.

Dani struggles against her, panic and stench choking her voice. “Jamie, what are you doing?”

“We’ve gotta get to them, Danielle. They’ve been waiting for us.”

“Jamie, we have to go, now!”

One of the specks writhes into the corner of her eye, spreads across it in an oily sheen. She sways, fumbling at the table behind them with a melancholy smile. “Sorry about this, but it’s the only way.”

By the time Dani sees the scalpel in her hand, it’s too late. Rebecca leaps from the stairs as Dani shoves away with a scream. There’s no helping it, nothing to do but throw her arms up as a shield; she’s too close.

But there’s no pain, no searing parting of her flesh. The blade breezes past her in slow motion, twinkling in the florescent glare. Dani watches, disbelieving, as the razor sinks into Jamie’s chest.

She laughs gleefully as blood spreads down her shirt. “Mum’s waiting for me in the Veil, Poppins. I’ve got to go to her.”

Dani slaps her hands around Jamie’s wrist, pulling back with all her might. Rebecca is there instantly, pinning Jamie to the table, wrestling with her arm. Surgical tools clatter to the floor, swallowed up by the inky puddle multiplying under their feet.

Some superhuman strength fights against them. Jamie clamps her other hand around the handle, pushing the blade in deeper. Dani screams and beats against her uselessly with a fist. Jamie laughs the hyena chuckle of a night terror, one of her eyes enveloped in a brown smudge that’s spreading rapidly across her skin.

Dani loses her grip, hands slick with blood. “I can’t hold her!” Rebecca cries, shaking with the effort. Jamie tilts her head backward with a blissful smile, waiting for the blade to slip through.

Dani looks around frantically for something to knock her out or –

The spreading black pool crackles as it contacts the silver remnants of Special Sauce, nearly overtaking the luminescent bottle lying on its side.

In a blink Dani sweeps up the vial, uncaps it and flings the liquid into Jamie’s face. She gasps and doubles over, retching. The squirming blobs fall from her face in a rain, popping into bursts of orange sparks.

Rebecca hauls her by the jacket toward the stairs. Dani pushes from behind, screaming “Go, go, go!” She snatches a crutch at the last moment as the stairs dissolve beneath them in a rush of black liquid.

They crash through the back door into a heap in the damp grass. Jamie lies on her back, sucking air through gritted teeth. Rebecca gently pushes a hyperventilating Dani aside and crouches down for a closer look.

“It’s reflected along a rib, not too deep.” She leans over Jamie. “You in there, mate?”

Jamie nods, stricken. “Pull it.”

Dani holds Jamie’s hand, squeezing her eyes shut to keep from vomiting as Rebecca gets a firm grip on the handle.

“One, two…”

Rebecca jerks the blade free in one quick motion..

“Three,” Jamie whimpers. Rebecca presses her hands over the wound, head drooping in relief.

They wait a long moment, catching their breath. Rebecca cautiously removes the pressure and peeks under Jamie’s shirt. “Not bad, just muscle. Isn’t bleeding too much.”

Jamie nods and sits up with a grimace. Dani clutches her jacket and presses her forehead to Jamie’s cheek, too sick and relieved to speak. Jamie holds her with one arm, shivering. “Well. That was different,” she laughs weakly.

“The Veil,” Dani says. “Somehow he figured out how to bring the Veil here...and bottled it.”

“The fuck does he want?”

“Charlotte.” Dani shakes her head. “It’s always been about her. To bring her back, make her stronger.”

“But he can’t now that – ” Rebecca looks at Jamie.

Jamie goes still. “But they’d need a...”

Oh, shit. “Where? Where do they keep them?” Dani asks frantically.

Jamie looks like she might be sick. “We were just there.”

\--

A line of black vehicles block the road to the Ministry when Rebecca rounds the corner, red and blue lights blinking from police cars surrounding the block.

“Fucking hang on!” she yells, downshifting.

The car lurches as she hops the sidewalk, rushing past men in suits holding their hands up frantically.

It doesn’t matter, Dani thinks hopelessly. There’s too many of them. They’ll be stopped before they even reach the stairs, before they can get to Hannah.

“There!” Jamie shouts, pointing. A small side entrance, nothing more than an emergency exit. Rebecca slams on the breaks and the car rocks to a halt 20 feet from the main stairwell.

The decision saves their lives.

The street disappears in a white flash, followed instantly by a tremendous wave that blows out the windows of the car with a _boom_. The front of the Ministry building explodes outward in a rain of debris and fire, blanketing the street in a plume of grey smoke.

Dani clutches the seat, ears ringing and dazed. The door flies open and she staggers onto the sidewalk, a strong grip pulling her into the building. Jamie sets her down against the wall, eyes wild with adrenaline.

Slowly Dani’s hearing returns, muffled blasts coming from inside, shouts and rumbles, Jamie’s voice as if through cotton.

“Poppins! You alright?”

Dani nods. Sharp stinging on the side of her face where flying glass left thin cuts, nothing more serious.

“Come on!” Rebecca starts off down the passage. The entrance meets narrow passage, deserted in the flicker of emergency lighting. They thread down a hallway lined with doors, chaotic noises and smell of smoke growing as they draw nearer to the lobby.

Rebecca is several paces ahead when a door bursts open.

“Gargoyle!” she screams, diving to the side.

Dani’s mind conjures up some cartoonish statue-come-to-life, but what comes through the door is much, much worse.

A four-legged abomination rounds the corner at speed, talons scrambling for purchase on the marble floor. A pair of crazed, bulging eyes lock on to Dani, yellowed teeth bared, filthy scales and drooling muzzle like a Komodo dragon and a plague-ridden bloodhound had a baby.

Jamie throws herself between them, swinging a crutch that snaps like a twig across the gargoyle’s face. The monster kicks her into the wall like a toy. Its drooling maw bears down on Dani, who has time only to wonder whether she’ll be crushed or bitten to death.

The monster recoils suddenly with an alien howl, legs flailing to claw at the cloud of smoke erupting from its back. Pieces crack and fall apart like broken clay, disintegrating until there is nothing but a smoking pile of dirt. Maria, bleeding from one eye and covered in soot, kicks a last twitching piece of it aside with a sneer.

“Fuckin’ ghost mutts, always hated ‘em.”

Dani runs to Jamie, who waves her off and rises with a wobble on her remaining crutch. Rebecca nods to Maria. “Glad to see you survived the explosion.”

Maria spits blood on the ground. “George found the bomb in a duffel. I barely had time to clear the corner before it went off. If the old man hadn’t sacrificed himself running it to the door we would all have been dead.”

Dani’s chest constricts. “Have you seen Hannah?”

“Have I seen her?” she hisses. “I checked her in! Your precious Operator walked that bastard right by us. Flashed that fucking Black Badge in my face and said she was bringing him to Detention. Next thing I know I’m bleeding from the ears and fighting off fuckin’ PMs.”

“He’s already opened the portal,” Rebecca says, eyes desperate.

Maria looks down. “She was actin’ odd, possessed. I should have stopped her.”

“Tell me where she went, and I will,” Dani says.

Maria snorts. “You’re a Seeker, aren’t ya? You look it, despite the fact that you’re pissin’ in your boots.” Maria slings a bag from her back. “You’ll need these, place is crawling with reds.”

A fire extinguisher and two strange guns spill out, emblazoned with silver cruxes. Jamie picks up a pistol with a lifted brow. “Special Sauce paintballs. Can’t believe I didn’t think of this myself.”

“There’s a stockpile in the central office in case of emergency,” Maria says. “Enjoy.”

“Where you going?” Jamie asks.

Maria shrugs. “Once a Scrubber, always a Scrubber. Gonna bag as many as I can before they get loose on the streets.” She looks at Dani and gestures over her shoulder. “They’d have gone to Materials, to get the _Breadmaker_.”

“Good luck,” Dani says.

Maria cackles. “Save it for yourself, holy one. Even if you survive this shitstorm, you’ll need all the good fortune you can find to handle this mess.” She winks at Jamie one last time and limps off toward the lobby. Dani smiles and shakes her head watching her go, feeling a tiny spark of respect despite herself.

Jamie and Rebecca stuff their pockets with ammo, Dani throws the silver can over her shoulder and they take off at a jog as fast as Jamie can limp, winding down corridors to the north end of the building.

A screeching ghoul charges near Detention. Jamie downs it with a flurry of shots, grinning at Dani over her shoulder. “Remind me to make one of these after we get out of here.”

Dani doesn’t have time to reply; she yanks the pin and douses her in a cloud of sparkling fog as a deformed ghost comes screaming up from behind. The phantom recoils, sizzling. Rebecca puts a well-aimed shot into the back of its head and it melts to the floor with a pained sigh.

Jamie coughs, plucking at her blood-caked, silver-stained shirt. “You owe me yet another top.”

Dani looks her up and down with a grin. “Worth it just to see you in glitter.”

A stairwell leads them two floors down. The landings are gradually thicker with ghosts, crawling up the walls and shrieking from around corners. The three of them make quick work of the phantoms, blasting them into syrupy puddles in the darkened close quarters.

They arrive at a steel fire door marked G2: MATERIALS. Rebecca wraps her fingers around the doorhandle, listening to muffled scraping and growling beyond. “Ready?”

Dani grips the extinguisher tight. “Ready.”

She flings the door open, sprinting to the right. Dani ducks to the left, narrowly missing a snarling gargoyle that Jamie and Rebecca cripple with a hail of shots. Dani douses a writhing ghoul in a cloud of gas. Fingers separate from a hand reaching out for her, turning to dust as they hit the floor.

Rebecca ducks as a flying chair explodes on the wall behind her. “Mad Mary!”

A screaming shade tosses another chair, shrugging off shots as Jamie fires close-range into its shoulder. Dani dives out of the way of a skidding desk, missing the beast with a blast from the extinguisher. The monster cackles, jaw gaping, flinging debris at them in gatling-gun succession. A pair of scissors impale the wall inches from Dani’s head.

Paintballs ricochet off harmlessly.

“Oy! Over here, ya skanky wretch!”

The fiend hisses and charges Jamie, who fires a series of shots into the floor. The ghost screeches to a halt and howls as her feet crackle in the splatters of Special Sauce.

Rebecca runs up form behind and kicks the back of a knee, dropping it to the floor. When the ghost roars out another raging scream she points the barrel point blank and fires a shot down its throat. The Mad Mary belches smoke loudly before collapsing in a steaming heap.

Rebecca nudges the corpse with a boot. “Should buy us some time.”

They’re in a wide room, lit by the flickering strobes of an emergency system. Debris is everywhere, as if a hurricane has swept through the room moments before. Dani steps over broken desks and collapsed storage shelves, shattered jars of tiny crosses and silver wire. A thick steel door hangs ajar at the end of the room.

Rows of _Breadmakers_ and other strange devices line the vault. One case hangs open and empty, keys still dangling in the lock.

The air shimmers and breaks along the far wall, blue light twisting in a dull prism. Flashes pierce through the gloom on the other side. Wails of misery, longing, and acid rage echo from the portal’s dark beauty. This time, Dani feels the color draining from her eyes, the hum of strange power waking within her as the clinging nails of the dead sink into her psyche. 

Jamie’s posture wilts, her eyes glassy with tears. “She’s gone in. We’re too late.”

“But Wingrave will kill himself,” Dani protests. “He’ll be trapped there!”

“He’ll make her open another portal, we’ll never find him.” She shakes her head brokenly. “You can’t stay connected to the _Breadmaker_ forever, not without.... and if she dies in the Veil...”

Dani goes cold.

The edges of the portal crackle, as if pressed in by some enormous weight. It will collapse any moment. Whispers of the dead flow over her like water, soothing, beckoning. She knows what she must do.

“Who was it? Who did Hannah see die?”

Dani looks to Rebecca, senses roaring, knowing now even the whites of her eyes have gone dark with the pull of the Veil. The past and future flow together in chaotic turbulence, flickering between impossibility and a clear path.

“Her daughter,” Rebecca says, tears streaming. “She had cancer. She was only two.”

Dani reaches across the distance between them, soundless as the _Breadmaker’s_ Siren.

_Don’t let her follow me._

Dani feels Rebecca’s understanding, waits for her slight nod, and steps forward. Jamie moves instinctively after her, baffled as Rebecca grabs her firmly around the waist.

“What the hell – Jessel! Get off! What the fuck are – ”

Dani turns before the edge, static crackling in the air. Jamie’s eyes go wide in realization.

“Dani!” She struggles against Rebecca’s grasp, unable to get any purchase with her broken leg. Rebecca pulls her gently down, sobbing silently into her back. Jamie’s voice breaks as she pushes fruitlessly against her grip. “Don’t go, please don’t do it…”

I’ve been asleep, Dani thinks. All 29 years, only to wake these past few weeks. “One day at a time,” she says quietly. “It’s all anyone has.”

Jamie sobs. “Please don’t go! Take me with you, take me with you…”

Dani smiles. _I love you, Jamie._

She strides through into darkness. The rift closes with a crack behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

School cried upside-down. She winces.

I am herald now, tool and hurried bow.

What is –

Force way to one knurled hand.

Thoughts come like a recording played backwards, disjointed gibberish. She hovers in the ether. The air is frigid and heavy.

Trace belong no seer fall waters.

Fuck.

An unhinged laugh echoes in the silence. Well…there’s one word that hasn’t deserted her. Dani takes a deep breath, strives to calm her mind.

Two unmet harried blackboard. Breathe.

Cold encircling ankles.

Closer.

Through damage jacket, blood couch met her. Door shattered glass. Ferry brings heat silver cutter meadow. _There_ , yes. Ferry. Island.

Island. Sea.

Bly.

Dani blinks, knee-deep in the waters of the lake. Bly spreads out around her, materializing in the gloom like a deconstructed mirage. The horizon curls up and overhead in a wave, dizzying and mind-numbing as a funhouse mirror. Looking straight above she can see the roof of the manor, burned out and sodden from the rain. There is no sky, no sun, just a diffuse blue-green glow of the ocean water, sloshing up around the edges of the world in a dark sphere.

She opens her mouth to call for Hannah but the name twists and breaks into ear-piercing static. Dani struggles against the mud, holding her firm like concrete boots.

_Oh, Seeker._ The whisper trickles like ice water down her neck. _I’d hoped you’d join us._

Henry. The whisper laughs. _You’ve located your thoughts. Impressive. Some spend an eternity in the Veil just trying to finish a sentence. It’s true you have the gift. And like many bearing it before you, you believed it would keep you safe here. Such hubris._

The water ripples as slithering shapes move beneath the surface. Dani whimpers as something brushes against her leg.

_Hubris, always from your kind. Clever little soldiers of the MPA._ He laughs as a slimy tentacle winds around Dani’s ankle, pulling her deeper into the mud.

_Did you really think yourself awake enough to escape this place?_

He appears along the shore. The black leech-like droplets of the Veil coarse across his skin, stain his grinning teeth.

Dani forces herself to be still, cold water lapping at her waist now. Somewhere deep below the chaos and static, she finds her own voice.

“If you love her, let her rest, Wingrave.”

Henry’s grin twists into a sneer. “You may have delayed this reunion, but it was inevitable. Now I get the double pleasure of making you witness it.” He turns to the water, mouth moving to murmured incantations. The words are unrecognizable yet foul, like hearing the worst obscenities of a foreign language. The vibrations of his beckoning call build and course across the fabric of the Veil, fanning the water in turbulent waves. Charred remnants of the Manor’s roof drift down like blackened snowflakes.

The last light of Dani’s hope snuffs out as she sinks deeper into the water. Hannah is dying. She’s left Jamie behind for nothing. And she’ll be entombed here, without her, for eternity. All at once she feels a great, piercing empathy for ghosts. No matter what sins they’ve committed, no one deserves to be trapped here.

The murky surface in front of Wingrave begins to peak, rise, and take shape in front of him. It grows limbs, lightens – becomes recognizable at last, white dress dripping over the sloshing water.

“Oh…my love…” Henry drops to his knees with a splash.

Charlotte’s face is human again, intact except for her absent bottom jaw. Her rasping breath fills the silence, tongue hanging limply from a gaping mouth. A few fingers on each hand still sprout bone blades from bleeding fingertips. “My love, I’ve come for you…” Henry holds out his arms. Charlotte looks at Dani. Henry follows her stare and laughs brokenly. “Yes, yes, deal with her first, if that’s what you want, my dear.”

Charlotte wades over to her slowly. Dani straightens, trembling. The stink hits her when she stands just a few inches away, arms hanging loosely at her sides: Charlotte isn’t as whole as she seemed from a distance. Worms writhe out from her skin, rotten pieces of her legs sluffing off into the water with each plodding step. She reaches out, almost curiously, and runs a claw along Dani’s face. Dani winces as it slices her skin. Blood trickles from her chin into the water. Henry laughs.

“Do you see, now? What power the other side has. You could have brought back anyone, had anything you dreamed. Instead your body will die here, leaving you to suffer forever.”

“I’m sorry,” Dani whispers. Charlotte pauses, claw hovering. “I’m sorry that you’re separated from her.”

Somewhere in the bloodshot, crusted eyes there is a flash of surprise. “Did he promise that you’ll see her again?” Dani casts a sad glance to the rotten filth that was once a loving mother. “Like this?”

Charlotte looks down at herself, hideous tongue sticking to her chest. Henry leans into her decaying ear. “My love, finish her. She cannot see how beautiful you are. She can’t know the power we will possess when you rise again.”

Dani takes a deep breath, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Power won’t bring Flora back.”

Charlotte blinks. Dani looks into her eyes. She hopes that there is a way out of here, a path to the Void. Maybe they can find it together as spirits. Strange that she should die feeling such compassion for the monster about to rip her to shreds. That’s just it, she thinks: there are no monsters, only the suffering we cannot face.

“Don’t listen to her, lover,” Henry hisses. “We can get our daughter back. I have all the power to – ” He stutters as the rotten woman turns to him slowly. “Charlotte, darling, let me explain it all. I can show you – ”

Henry lets out a strangled yelp and looks down in shock. Charlotte’s hand is buried the wrist in his stomach. She brings her other claw up, gently, to stroke his cheek. He lets out an animal shriek as she curls her fingers in, yanking outward. Dani turns her head away from a spray of blood and the sickening wet sounds of Henry’s intestines dropping into the lake water. The other hand slashes across his throat, cutting the scream short. His body crumples into the water with a deflating choke.

Dani forces herself to look up, every muscle rigid in anticipation. But the killing blow never comes. Charlotte takes a step backward, regarding her with sad acceptance. The force holding Dani’s feet in place abruptly releases. She stumbles onto the shore, shivering with cold.

The image of The Lady of the Lake begins to fade. Henry’s body sinks into the water, disappearing from view. “Forgive him,” Dani calls. “Let go.” Charlotte nods. For a fleeting moment she is whole again, then gone.

Suddenly Dani is alone in the mist of the lake. There’s no time.

She breaks into a run for the front door of the Manor. The spherical tapestry of the Veil rolls out before her, like an endless hallway. She thinks she’ll never reach the end, but then it’s there: her hand closes around the doorknob. A flash consumes everything, a physical jolt as if the world moves instantly a foot to the left.

“Tell me where you first saw the apparition?”

Dani blinks. Hannah stands with a pen and paper, eyebrows raised. Dani looks out at the lake. Rebecca isn’t there. “I…”

Hannah smiles politely. “Dear, is everything alright?”

“There,” Dani points to the opposite shore. “I saw it there, the first time. About two weeks ago.”

“And what were you doing at the time?”

“Just going for a walk.”

“Describe it to me, please be as detailed as you can.”

Dani fights the response, balling her fists at her sides. “Hannah…”

“Form of a woman?”

She’s compelled, helpless, dragged along like a doll by a child. “Y-yes, I think so…”

“You say it’s clothes are disheveled?” Hannah frowns, shaking her head as if warding something off.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’re going to,” Hannah says uneasily. “You always do.”

“Hannah, where are you?” Dani reaches out, but her hand passes through Hannah’s image like smoke. “You have to tell me where you are.”

Hannah’s lip trembles. “I can’t.”

“Yes you can, Hannah –”

A flash and a jolt.

“Tell me what you saw.” Hannah leans in expectantly at the foot of the hospital bed.

“I saw…” _No. No. No._ Dani fights with all she has. The words come ripping out all the same. “A place where matter is emptiness…where…”

“Go on. Please.” Hannah tries takes her hands, voice hoarse. “This is the moment when I knew you were special.”

“Where…the light and the dark are one.” Dani flexes her numb left hand inside the sling, grabbing for anything to break the spell. Her Seeker’s voice pierces through. _Hannah, where are you?_

Hannah looks away. “Jamie cried, she cried so much when you died.” She folds her hands on her lap. “You must not let that happen again.”

“Hannah…” Dani sits up. The air around them feels brittle, as if any moment the images around them will crumble. “I can’t leave the Veil without you.”

“But I must stay, my daughter’s coming soon.” Tears run down Hannah’s smiling cheeks. “She’s waiting for me,” she looks around the hospital room. A crack spreads down the wall. “She’s here somewhere.”

“Hannah, wait – ” A flash and a jolt.

“It’s Ms. Grose, actually, has been for a while.” Hannah startles. “Oh, Dani! I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…” The walls shudder, sending a picture crashing to the floor. Hannah averts her eyes from it, embarrassed. “It would mean very much to me to give you the traditional greeting.”

Dani looks around the kitchen frantically. She turns up the gas burner to high, throws the pan of pasta on the floor. “Hannah, look! Look at me!”

Hannah blinks, smiling politely. “Dani, you must calm down, Owen’s coming for…”

Dani holds her hand over the flame, keeping her eyes locked on Hannah’s. “You don’t know Owen yet. But you do, because this isn’t real. This is the _Veil_ , Hannah.”

Hannah breathes hard, watching Dani’s hand hover in the flames, unscathed. “These are memories.” The walls begin to melt around them. She feels the press of time, senses Hannah somewhere in the dark, taking her last breaths. “You _have_ daughters, Jamie and Rebecca. They need you. I need you.” Dani’s voice breaks. “I can’t do this Seeker shit without you.” The wall behind them crumbles.

Hannah focuses as if seeing her clearly for the first time. “Seeker...”

“Hannah,” Dani says, eyes rolling over black as the floor collapses in a roar beneath them. “Where are you?”

“Here.”

Dani flinches toward the whisper. She stands again in a formless sea of darkness, solid, yet nothing lies beneath her feet. Her steps make no sound, blood rushing through her ears in the silence.

“ _Here_.”

The whisper is quieter, weaker. Dani scrambles forward blindly. She stumbles onto her hands and knees, crawling and pawing the shapeless surface. “Hannah!”

This time, just a soft exhale. “Hannah!” she cries, grasping madly in the dark. Dani’s hands catch on something, cold and thin, like hair.

Wires.

Her numb left hand finds the icy steel barrel of the _Breadmaker_ , humming its soft bell tone. The other touches Hannah’s bare head, stickers still warm on her temples.

Dani cradles Hannah in her lap. “Wake up. You’ve gotta open the portal again.”

No response. Dani puts a hand to her chest, holding her breath while she waits for movement. One, shivery breath, and then stillness. “Don’t go,” she whispers, tears stinging the cut on her cheek. “Please…”

Dani pulls the stickers from Hannah’s temples, and presses them to her own. She struggles with the _Breadmaker_ , unsure of even how to pick it up. Finally she finds the grip in an impression under the barrel: just a small handle to hoist it by. There’s no trigger, nor any button she can find. Dani stands and points the end toward the darkness.

She holds her breath, and lets her will shout into the silence. _Take us home._

Nothing happens. Dani stifles a sob and hefts the weight of the _Breadmaker_ again. “Come on…” The silence and formlessness press in, smothering. Nothing. She lets the end of the barrel drop down, collapsing in defeat. Dani imagines giving up, curling up next to Hannah’s still warm body and letting the darkness swallow them both.

Memories trickle in, passing and fading before her like a slide projector. Playing with toy cars in the grass with Eddie. The horrid dawn in his eyes as he looked at her with something more than friendship. The first time her mother hit her, the taste of iron on Dani’s lip. Judy’s cold hand in her own at the funeral, the freight-train whisper that chased her across an ocean: _I killed him, I killed him and you’ll never know it._ The seafoam-green phone on the kitchen wall, ringing the day her father died.

This isn’t the rapturous thread of standing before the Void. These memories beckon like glue traps, promising never-ending rumination, a spinning gibbet of regret and second-guesses. The phone rings louder and louder. She wants to pick it up, just to make it stop. Dani covers her ears and whimpers. Not this one. Not this one.

Jamie. Dani lingers on pieces, flashes: that crooked grin, the feel of her lips. If she must be bound forever to some memory, it might as well be her. The pieces of Jamie run like sand through her fingers.

A light erupts in the darkness, drawing nearer. It brightens under Dani’s feet, sprouting grass, salty air, the wind and the rain. The crash of waves fill her ears.

The sea-cliffs of Bly. Hannah’s body lies near the edge, unmoving. Dani looks down onto the rocks ringed with white foam below. Even if we survive the fall, we’ll freeze to death in minutes.

“Doesn’t sound so bad, I guess.” Dani’s head snaps up, but there’s no one around. Jamie isn’t here. The _Breadmaker_ hums softly.

“It’s me,” she whispers. “The trail to the portal is for me.”

She stands again, draws the _Breadmaker_ level toward the sea. It’s beautiful here, this memory of the place that caught her fall. There’s something left to do, something she does yearn for, a trail of breadcrumbs yet to follow: to love herself.

The hum builds until it breaks: the Siren fills the air, rippling the grass, ringing along the cliffside, sending rocks tumbling into the sea. The tone rises in pitch until the very atoms within her sing with it. A tare rips across the water below with a chest-rattling thunder, shimmering and folding under the crashing waves.

Dani throws the _Breadmaker_ down, rips the wires from her head.

She sets her palms against Hannah’s body, takes a breath, and pushes her from the cliff. There is a splash in the water below. Dani has no idea if the portal will stay open. There’s only one way to find out.

She jumps.

\--

There is a great distance to fall, or to rise; Dani can’t tell which. She only knows that she is weightless and moving. She sees everything through dark eyes, souls caught in the net of the Veil and glimpses of the vast stretch of the Void beyond. There are other things, great forces her mind can’t comprehend, all of it filling her with a profound stillness. Hannah is there with her, falling, rising. They’re going home.

\--

Dani laughs.

She hold up her left hand, numb, and pokes it. It’s empty, all of it. The marble floor, the broken clutter all around them. The air she breathes.

Hannah sits on the floor across from her, wide-eyed and disoriented. Dani tosses a piece of wood in the air, watches it fall. Hannah gives her such a quizzical look that she laughs again, shrugs, tosses another piece of debris. It’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen, this mess around them.

Hannah starts laughing with her, curiously at first, then deeper, a great full-body sound until there are tears in her eyes. She falls onto her back and makes snow-angels in the debris on the floor. Dani tosses a ball of paper at her and Hannah throws it back. They lose it completely, hanging on to each other in hysterics.

Shouts come from down the hallway. Dani is dimly aware of men in suits piling into the room, staring dumbly at the two women holding their stomachs and cackling.

A door at the end of the room creaks open. Rebecca emerges, eyes bloodshot and wary. Hannah catches her breath and stands, helping Dani to her feet. Rebecca goes utterly still, staring at them for a long moment.

She strides forward and pulls Dani into a crushing hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she whispers. She kisses her cheek, hard, and runs into Hannah’s arms. Hannah rocks her back and forth, murmuring soft words with a blissful smile. She opens her eyes and tilts her head toward the men now babbling questions at them.

“I’ll take care of this. Go to her.”

It’s a short distance to travel, and yet it feels like an age has passed when Dani steps into the room and eases the door shut. It’s quiet in the vault, still dark. A silhouette is crumpled by the wall, not far from where Dani left this world.

Dani Clayton has died once, battled monsters, been to Hell and back, but breaking this silence dwarfs it all in significance. She clears her throat, fighting back tears pressing in.

“You know I was thinking…”

Jamie’s brokenhearted posture stiffens. She turns slowly toward Dani, tear-strewn and disbelieving.

“…the four of us could really use a vacation.”

Jamie struggles to her feet and limps over, shirt torn, covered in blood and splashes of silver. Dani’s heart does a backflip at the icy expression on her face. She stops a few inches away, fists balled at her sides. Tears spring from Dani’s wide eyes. If Jamie hates her, she may as well have stayed in the Veil. It isn’t until she raises a hand slowly to hover over her chest, lip trembling, that she realizes what’s happening.

She thinks Dani is a ghost.

Dani closes the gap between them in a rush. Jamie’s hand comes to rest on her, solid, real, and she closes her eyes in pained relief. Dani takes her other hand and places it on her bloodied cheek, nuzzling into her palm. Jamie takes one shaky breath in, swallowing hard and steadying her hoarse voice.

“And where would you suggest?”

Dani laughs softly. “Somewhere warm. And quiet, and…” she loses her train of thought as Jamie looks at her again with something very much the opposite of hate. “Private.”

Jamie cups Dani’s face in her hands, thumb gently coursing underneath the slash on her cheek.

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

She starts apologize, but Jamie cuts her off with the fiercest kiss of her life, so blindingly intense Dani’s legs turn to rubber. They cling to each other, all teeth and pressure and hitching breaths, pulling tighter until lips are bruised and lungs burn for air. Jamie clutches her tight with a single relieved sob.

Dani kisses her eyebrow. “I guess if you swear off stabbing yourself in the heart, we have a deal.”

Jamie laughs. “That’s different, I was possessed.”

“Don’t argue with me,” Dani sniffs, kissing her again, brushing their lips together softly.

Jamie grins from under heavy-lidded eyes. “Wish there was a lock on that door.”

As if on cue, there’s a soft knock and the creak of hinges.

“Oi,” Rebecca says. “You can shag later. Hannah would like a hug please, and there’s a whole raft of Black Badges wanting to know who just took a casual stroll through the Veil.”

Dani groans. “Do I have to?”

Jamie smirks. “Tell ‘em to sod off.”

She laughs. “And…just walk out? Go back to teaching, try to forget that sometimes my eyes turn black and I speak for the dead?”

“Your choice entirely, Poppins.”

“Do Seekers have day jobs?”

She laughs, radiant despite being thrashed to bits. “Don’t think there’s a rule book for this sort of thing.”

Dani takes the hand of the woman she is thoroughly, completely in love with, and finds she agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all of you that read, left kudos, and comments on Part 1. I got stuck many times in the tangle of Part 2, and whenever I despaired I returned and read them again and got back to it with renewed hope.
> 
> Will there be a Part 3? Well, it'd be awfully cruel if I left you wondering DID JAMIE HEAR DANI SAY IT IN HER SEEKER VOICE WELL DID SHE, and they definitely have to take a vacation that includes our left-out friend Owen. So the answer is yes. However! I do also write things that aren't fan-fiction that are in need of my attention. So I can't make any promises about when Part 3 will arrive. But it will be fermenting in the back of my strange mind, and will likely burst out Alien-style as these things usually do. See you then <3


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